Grigor Dimitrov Dumps His Coach Roger Rasheed

““We had many accomplishments together …”

You are either trying to be PC or you still don’t realize that you went backwards with Roger “the fitness trainer”, with your talent,by now you should be established top 10 player and more that that. Wasted time (and talent) you cant bting back, Гриша!

July 6th, 2015 at 7:42 pm

I’m sure he must know, Wog Boy. And also it is true that they probably did accomplish things such as increased fitness and improved work ethic that may likely serve Grigor very well going forward. But he clearly needs an actual coach rather than a glorified trainer, so this is good news for Dimitrov and fans.

July 6th, 2015 at 8:03 pm

autoFilter,

Agree but you can’t bring back wasted time, ask us Nole fans, we know very well how Nole wasted two years of his career, 2008-2010. Grigor had a good Sweedish team (can’t remember the names), I never understood why he replaced them with RR. I was following RR here as commentator, and he is still with channel 7, and he is such good talker and salesman (selling himself as tennis expert) that he probably talked Grigor into player/coach relationship. Worked well for RR, another good player on the list of players he coached, good reference for the future candidates to be coached by him.

July 6th, 2015 at 8:24 pm

Good news. If he could reach his potential, it would have a huge impact on the tour.

July 6th, 2015 at 8:24 pm

There was speculation of this pre Wimbledon that had Grigor bombed here as he has done all year something of this kind could occur. So i’m not surprised at this happening.

But my assessment of Grigor still remains the same:

I think he’s a overrated talent that the media and ATP powers that be are hyping since they are DESPERATE for him to take over.

Sooner or later Fedal, Novak and Andy will start waning and will leave, and this is a business. Stars bring in the $$$$ and the game needs new major stars.

On the PR front: Grigor is the obvious guy. Yet, on the court is where stars are truly made and for me Grigor is nowhere being the one to take over the mantle from those guys since really:

He’s got ZERO MENTAL STEEL about it.

Some say you can develop it, but that’s a load of tosh. You are either born with that gritty, competitive nature or you are not. The guys he’s trying to emulate have it in spades.

Nadal had it from day. We all saw it in him on first sight. Federer is the ultimate pro: he has steel or else how can he achieve so much for so long? He just wouldn’t be able to.

People say Novak wasted some time in the past that’s false. Novak was a competitive, ambitious player from day 1. He won a Slam at 20 for goodness sake:

He wasn’t some softie!

Ditto Andy. He’s had Fedal and Novak infront of him and he’s always said he loves playing in this era and he’s always worked his butt off to win Slams. That takes some steel to do especially when he’s lost so many big matches and still maintained the ambition and work ethic to keep on trying. In short:

The Fab 4 are steely individuals. Hence why they have been at the top for a decade plus.

Grigor has none of that steel, just look at the facts:

Age: 24

Grand Slams: ZERO finals

MS: ZERO finals

WTF: ZERO qualifications

Ranking: NEVER even top 7.

To me that does not indicate a top tier pro. At all. All the above 4 had done something of note by that age. Even his own generation: Kei has surpassed him on some of those fronts. Ditto Milos. Even personnel like Wawrinka, Berdych etc had some results to suggest a top tier player by that age.

I mean, what is Grigor’s major career result till date? ONE paltry GS SF. That’s it.

So to me what he has shown on court does not indicate he’s anywhere near the player people suggest, more like hope, him to be.

July 6th, 2015 at 8:47 pm

grigor does seem to be a softie, and a bit goofy too.

he has a lot of talent like monfils or gasquet, but he’s a bit like them in other ways too -although gasquet’s having a surprisingly nice run at wimbledon this year.

in any case, this is probably a good move. hopefully it helps.

July 6th, 2015 at 9:34 pm

Very well said, Brando. Dimitrov is all hype and not at all the guy to look up to as the one to carry the torch after the Big Four. Grigor is the most overrated player of his generation.

July 6th, 2015 at 9:37 pm

jane,

Grigor remainds on the small country town boy who suddenly found himself under the lights of the big city, something like this:):

http://youtu.be/Dz6GzKWiIAs

July 6th, 2015 at 9:50 pm

lol, wog boy. sharapova will school on the city life. ;)

July 6th, 2015 at 9:58 pm

Remove Grigor and put in Stan at 24 and you could have made the same argument – 6 years ago.

Some guys are just late bloomers. It’s easier however just to dump on them. I understand how the armchair experts love to do that in here.

July 6th, 2015 at 10:01 pm

There is still hope for Grigor, I think. Yes, he’s been over-rated, over-hyped, hot and cold, last year looked serious, this year not; but my guess is there is a break-up with Sharapova sooner or later, then with a new coach be back contending at the pointy end of master’s 1000’s and GS’s, all of which will take a few more years to happen.

July 6th, 2015 at 10:19 pm

I think he has hope as well. His technique on shots is similar to a certain someone. His footwork between shots is not as efficient. His court positioning is much deeper in the court. He needs to be his own man, but he also needs to stand closer to the baseline and impose his 6’3″ shotmaking ability rather than relying on youthful legs playing too far back.

July 6th, 2015 at 10:29 pm

rasheed is a fraud. still living off the credit for lucking out and ending up as hewitt’s ‘coach’.
just talks a lot of mush.

area dimitrov needs work on is return. go find an ex returner great. hire davydenko for a while.

July 6th, 2015 at 11:44 pm

“hire davydenko for a while.”
Better yet, call roy.

July 6th, 2015 at 11:59 pm

Grigor had a tough row to hoe from the get go, being called Baby Fed and all…..talk about pressure!

July 7th, 2015 at 12:50 am

@Okiegal,

And yet he chose Federer as his agent:)

July 7th, 2015 at 1:32 am

I kinda want Annacone to work with Dimirtov. I think Grigor has the potential to reach at least the top 5 and Paul has some experience working with players that have similar skill-sets.

July 7th, 2015 at 2:08 am

Not surprised. Hasn’t worked.

July 7th, 2015 at 2:36 am

@Wog….

Yes he did, that totally slipped my mind! He is my fav of the up and comers!!

July 7th, 2015 at 11:02 am

Grigor has Fed’s strokes but not Fed’s timing. His RETURN is HORRIBLE. He needs to copy the other Swiss (Wawrinka). Wawrinka just slices 99% of first serve returns. Sure the returns are weaker, but he gets tons of returns in play. There is more variation on Wawrinka’s second serve return, but lots of times he will play way back, let the ball drop, and then crush it.

Wawrinka is honest. He’s saying, “Yes my fast twitch timing isn’t great, yes my strokes are huge, I will work around it”

Right now Grigor isn’t honest, he tries the Fed quick block returns. And he is and will always be incapable of that.

July 8th, 2015 at 12:13 am

When Roger Rasheed started working with Dimitrov he was ranked 28th in the world, had never won an ATP title, and never made it past 3rd round of a major and had a losing record at each of them. Since working with Rasheed he has won 4 ATP titles, including 2 500s, made the QF of the Australian Open, SF at Wimbledon, has a winning record at each of the majors and reached a career high ranking of 8 in the world – he is currently ranked 11.

I normally don’t like to be too critical of other people’s posts, but I have to say this. I don’t know what universe those of you going on about wasted time, and that Rasheed didn’t help, and it was all a big mistake, live in, but in this one these are huge and important steps forward. Going from from 28 to 8 is a hell of a lot harder than going from 48 to 8, and going from 8 to being one of the 2-3 best players ON THE PLANET is an ever bigger leap. That leap requires a lot of components, and one of the components that was holding him back was his fitness: cramping in 3 set matches and getting silly little injuries here and there.

He is stronger and fitter now, and his improved results bear that out. And while there is more work to do on his game, which Rasheed may not have been the best person to address, I can think of nobody who could get him to where he needed to be physically quicker than Rasheed. In any case, to say that nothing was accomplished and that it was a waste of time is the kind of short sightedness that can ruin careers, and I’m just glad that you’re all on the outside looking in, rather than the other way around.

Just because a player changes coaches, doesn’t mean their relationship was a waste or a disaster. Just because Dimitrov’s career path hasn’t followed the standard arch of the last 20-30 years major champions, doesn’t mean it’s a bust – he’s 24, for god’s sake. There could be many reasons why he changed coaches, but at the end of the day, what he really needs is to think for himself how he can improve his game, and implement tactical patterns that work consistently. But that’s been the same for every player in the world. Nadal wasn’t made in a day – he was on tour for 5 years before he won a major, the same for Federer. Djokovic did it a little earlier, but that was a fluke, and didn’t follow it up until he’d been on tour for 7 years.

I have no skin in the game – I don’t know Roger Rasheed, and I have no reason to defend him, but in my opinion talent and technique are 90% of tennis, and Dimitrov has more if it in his pinky finger than 99.9% of players have in their whole body, so I wouldn’t write him off, nor would I slough off the last 2 years of his accomplishments.

A little perspective never hurts.

July 8th, 2015 at 10:45 am

The fact is that Dimitrov climbed from 28th to eighth place thanks to Rashid. The fact is that Dimitrov dropped from 8 to 16 place thanks to its volatility. He artificially and pretty quickly was declared as a great hope … this fact made him unrealistic. According my observations, his real place is between 20 and 50. It lacks large and healthy “balls” …with small and weak “balls” he could not expect anything better than that. Pity.

August 10th, 2015 at 12:01 am