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18th Seed Grigor Dimitrov of Bulgaria beat 22nd seed Nicolas Jarry of Chile 7-6, (2), 6-4 in the quarterfinals of the Shanghai Masters on Friday, October 13.
The 32-year-old Bulgarian is enjoying a fine run in the tournament. He had beaten top seed Carlos Alcaraz in the previous round a couple of days back.
He looks fit enough to go through the grind and will take some beating in the semifinals, where he will face Russian Andrey Rublev, who is coming on the back of a win over Ugo Humbert.
On that note, let us take a look at two things that stood out in the match:
#1. Grigor Dimitrov and Nicolas Jarry both struggled to deal with each other’s first serves
Grigor Dimitrov and Nicolas Jarry dominated with their first serves throughout the match, with both having a first-serve ratio of above 90%. The duo fired 11 and 13 aces in the match, respectively. There were a lot of unreturned serves that hit the net and also several short returns, which were duly dispatched for winners.
There was only a single break of serve in the whole match that Grigor Dimitrov got in the seventh game of the second set to go 4-3 up. The Bulgarian then made no mistake in building up on the advantage to wrap up the match. Prior to that, there was a tie-break in the first set that Dimitrov won convincingly.
Jarry won only 25% of the points on his second serve in the match despite having a first serve percentage of 94. That proved to be costly for him in the end, as Dimitrov fared much better in his second serve.
#2. Grigor Dimitrov played slices extensively as Nicolas Jarry’s forehand became erratic
Nicolas Jarry tried to engage Grigor Dimitrov in crosscourt backhand exchanges, but the latter started playing slices more often as the match progressed.
Jarry often responded to them by playing his inside-out forehand towards Dimitrov’s backhand but succeeded in hitting the ball wide or long on a handful number of occasions.
Those errors committed by the Chilean never really allowed him to assert his supremacy in the match. To his credit, the Bulgarian moved really well to tackle Jarry’s groundstrokes and his defense allowed him to stay in most of the rallies.
Jarry thus lost the match despite being the more aggressive of the two players, as the slower conditions nullified his powerful game to an extent.
