Whose weekend win meant more—Alexander Zverev's or Grigor Dimitrov's?

We measure athletes by how they perform in their sport’s biggest events. That goes double for tennis players. In this game, when it comes to securing your place in the history books, you have to triumph at the Grand Slams.

For the current crop of ATPers who are still trying to scale those Olympian heights, though, minor tournaments can mean just as much as the majors. To get to the top of the rankings, you must win week in and week out; to establish an edge over the tour’s rank and file, you must beat them on a regular basis. Just ask the guys in the Big Four: Yes, they try to peak for the Slams, but you rarely see them throw a match away at any event. The best are the best, everywhere they go.

February is a month of mostly minor events. With the Australian Open and a round of Davis Cup out of the way, these are the weeks when we begin to see who might be in it for the long haul in 2017. After Sunday, it looks more likely than ever that Grigor Dimitrov, who won in Sofia, and Alexander Zverev, who won in Montpellier, will be forces to be reckoned with sooner rather than later.

Zverev got the lion’s share of the celebratory hype for his second career title. This isn’t surprising: He’s new, he’s 19 and he has been touted as a future No. 1 by all the right people. More important, unlike the 25-year-old Dimitrov, who was once touted as a future No. 1, the mop-topped, gold-chain-sporting German has yet to reveal his weaknesses. It’s still possible for us to believe he doesn’t have any.

With his back-to-back wins over home favorites Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Richard Gasquet in the semifinals and final, Zverev certainly showed off an array of strengths.

Zverev was coming off a Davis Cup defeat to Belgium that he described as “bitterly disappointing,” but he exhibited no effects of that disappointment—or any loss of confidence—in Montpellier, where he won each of his first three matches in three sets. It would have been easy for Zverev, after losing the first set to Tsonga in a tiebreaker, to lose heart, too—he was moaning to himself and the chair umpire for much of that set. But he bounced back to win the second 6-2. Two summers ago, when Zverev made his U.S. debut, he appeared to be the game’s next hothead in training. He can still get negative, but his self-control has improved.

Zverev also showed again why people are so high on his game. He’s one of the few really tall players—he’s 6’6”—who doesn’t make you feel like you’re watching a really tall player. He moves fluidly, and takes advantage of his leverage by teeing off for winners from behind the baseline; most players have to move farther forward before they can go for that much. With Zverev, big risks don’t look all that risky.

Zverev got nervous in the final against Gasquet, but found his way past those nerves. Up 6-2 in the first-set tiebreaker, he made two errors before settling down, using his serve and closing it out 7-4. In the second set, he served for the match at 5-3 and went up 40-0 before making three straight errors. Again, Zverev settled down, hit an ace and closed out the match. That’s the biggest benefit of being 6’6”: a get-out-of-jail-free serve.

“I’m very happy to win my first title of the year,” said Zverev, who moved to a career-high No. 18. “Obviously it was a very tough tournament; only one straight-sets match in the whole tournament, today, and it was not an easy one.”

“First title of the year”: It sounds like Zverev expects more of them in 2017, and he should. That’s how he celebrated, too: He threw his arms up, brought them back down and jogged to the net. I even liked how low-key his box was; Zverev’s father, brother and brother’s girlfriend reacted with little more than rye smiles—no mad fist-pumping for them. They know that with Zverev, small wins like this should lead to bigger ones down the road.

Dimitrov’s win on Sunday also came at a small event. Sofia is a 250, in just its second year of existence. But on a personal level they don’t come much bigger for the Bulgarian, who grew up not far away. Dimitrov has a game that resembles Roger Federer’s; now he has a tournament that resembles Federer’s own personalized event in his hometown of Basel.

The concept works wonders in both places. Federer has been to the Basel final 12 times and made it a sell-out event; last week Dimitrov packed the house in Sofia every time he played. He needed all the help he could find to squeak past Jerzy Janowicz 7-5 in the third in the first round, and close out David Goffin after nearly blowing a 5-0 second-set lead in the final.

“This is my most prestigious title for sure—winning at home is a tremendous success for me,” said Dimitrov, whose arms were shaking uncontrollably as he bent down to give the court a kiss afterward. “I will treasure this title for the rest of my life. It’s something amazing for me.”

Dimitrov is now 14-1 in 2017, with two titles and a Grand Slam semifinal appearance. He’s up to No. 12 in the world, and is playing like a Top 5 player. He’s also roughly back to where he was three years ago. Over the first half of 2014, he won three titles, cracked the Top 10 and blew out Andy Murray to reach the Wimbledon semifinals, where he nearly pushed Novak Djokovic to a fifth set. This time he did push Rafael Nadal to a fifth set in the Aussie Open semis, before losing.

Is that as far as Dimitrov is destined to get? Possibly—the Big Four remains as big a roadblock as it was in 2014. On the one hand, Dimitrov’s experience would seem to make him better-equipped to go farther this time. On the other hand, as we found out in his 7-5, 6-4 win over Goffin, experience can’t solve all problems.

The biggest of Dimitrov’s problems have always been his backhand and his second serve. Double faults have come in bunches, and his one-hander has broken down under pressure. Both of those things happened again on Sunday. In the first set, Dimitrov went up 3-0 and nearly blew a 40-0 lead at 4-4; in the second set, he went up 5-0 and blew a 40-0 lead at 5-1, before finally breaking serve to win 6-4. Along the way, Dimitrov double-faulted nine times and watched his backhand float limply into the net on crucial points. By the time 5-0 had turned to 5-4, you began to wonder if Dimitrov’s entire season could come crashing down if he were to lose.

He likely would have lost if he had been playing a stronger or higher-ranked player. Instead, Goffin returned the favor by double-faulting and missing an easy forehand at 5-4. Disaster had been averted, but had the questions about Dimitrov been answered? Not yet. His weaknesses can never be unrevealed.

But winning is often about surviving, and only from the small survivals can bigger ones be imagined.