(MENAFN- Khaleej Times) Five years ago, he had taken a (first) set off Roger Federer in the DDF Tennis Championship before losing the first round.
On Tuesday night, in the first round, a large number of fans must have thought that yet again a first round defeat for the only Arab hope - Malek Jaziri was on the cards when the top seed Grigor Dimitrov easily won 6-4.
The Tunisian, however, had different ideas. After two hours and 17 minutes of slugfest, he threw his arms up to let out a roar for the biggest victory of his career. He was obviously on cloud nine for beating the top seed in his seventh attempt in Dubai. "Great feeling today (Tuesday)," he told reporters.
"First of all, to win my first top 5. I am really happy for that. I tried to fight every point since the beginning. Was so tight, every time was longer on the court, so I was playing better, feeling more comfortable on court," said the Tunisian wild card entrant.
The 117th ranked player in the world from Tunisia has been given a wildcard for the DDF tournament at The Aviation Club since 2013, thus mostly he faces a top ranked player in the opening round. "Everywhere is home for me," he said smiling when he was asked where does he feel like home. However, he was quick to add: "No, I think I feel so good here in Dubai."
"They gave me a lot of opportunities in the past, like with wild cards. I got a lot of experience of playing top guys here in Dubai. I played Murray last year, the year before Novak, five years ago I played Federer as well," he pointed out.
Jaziri said in a lighter vein that Dubai always made him play against top seeds. But, he added, "I knew one day it would happen. You know, I played a good game against Roger and most of the guys last year as well against Murray."
He said that he has had tough 2017 when he went out of top 100. Jaziri revealed that he has been working a lot with his coach to improve his game.
Talking about his win over Dimitrov, he said: "I was really aggressive today (Tuesday). I tried hard to keep the ball in, tried hard to attack him, to make a lot of variety in the game. This is most important."
Jaziri said that he stayed calm and didn't get nervous on crucial points. "I tried to keep going, to encourage myself, saying, It's okay, next game is my serve. Most important is to keep winning my serve. It was the objective in the third set," he said explaining his game plan in the match.
"I knew I had nothing to lose but keep going forward and wait for his (Dimitrov) unforced errors," he added.
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