Late opponent change no matter for Dimitrov in French Open opener

PARIS—Grigor Dimitrov made a winning start to his 2018 French Open campaign on Sunday, moving past last-minute lucky loser Mohamed Safwat of Egypt in two hours and two minutes, 6-1, 6-4, 7-6 (1).

Dimitrov was originally scheduled to play a more familiar opponent, Viktor Troicki—they’d met five times before, with Dimitrov leading the series, 3-2, and had played in the same round of the French Open two years ago, with Troicki coming back from two sets to one down to win in five.

But just before the match, Troicki withdrew with lower back pain, propelling Safwat into his spot as a lucky loser. Not only was Safwat into a main draw at a major for the first time in his career, he was the first Egyptian man to play the main draw of a major since Tamer El Sawy at the 1996 US Open.

And for Dimitrov, it was a first-time meeting on very short notice.

But the world No. 5 handled it very well, losing just eight points in an blowout opening set, and then holding off a free-swinging Safwat in the next two sets to move through to the second round.

WATCH—Match point from Dimitrov's win over Safwat:

Dimitrov had a positive winners-to-unforced errors differential on the match (31 to 28) and perhaps most impressively didn’t lose a single point at net—he went 24 for 24 in the match at the net.

Afterwards, Safwat spoke about the last-minute shake-up.

“I found out I would play an hour before, like, at 10:00,” he said. “I was warming up at 9:00. I finished 9:30. And by the time I went to sign in it was 10:00. They told me, ‘Do you know the news?’ I said, ‘I know I’m one out.’ He said, ‘Yeah, but you might go on court at 11:00.’ I said, ‘Okay.’ And I had everything in the locker room in Suzanne Lenglen. So I had to go there and then come back—so I tried to deal with it as best as I could.”

The 27-year-old Egyptian pushed Dimitrov hard from midway through the second set on.

“From that moment I picked up the momentum, and it was actually fun at the end to play,” he declared. “That’s when I figured out what was happening and what I needed to do. And it was really enjoyable.”

WATCH—Interview with Dimitrov after the win:

“We spent a bit of time when we played juniors. He’s a great guy,” Dimitrov said of Safwat.

“I think he was obviously very nervous at the beginning—I felt that in the first set, and even at some point in the second. But I didn’t think of anything else. I didn’t panic. I just took everything as normal. I was just trying to find a little window that I could, you know, swoop in and just take the match.”

This win was Dimitrov’s first win in more than a month—his last win on the tour came against Malek Jaziri in the third round of Barcelona, on April 26. He had been on a three-match losing streak since then, losing his next match in Barcelona (to Pablo Carreno Busta) and then back-to-back opening round losses in Madrid and Rome (to Milos Raonic and Kei Nishikori).

But that losing streak is over and Dimitrov is into the second round, where he’ll have a first-time meeting against American Jared Donaldson, a 6-3, 4-6, 3-6, 6-3, 6-4 winner over Chilean Nicolas Jarry.

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