“I'm a person that loves the game, and I've, in a way, lived for the game," Dimitrov celebrates 400 wins on the ATP Tour after victory over Varillas.

Grigor Dimitrov advanced to the Chengdu Open by defeating Juan Pablo Varillas 6-3, 6-4, and he achieved his 400th victory on the ATP Tour.

The former world No. 3 began the Asian tournaments in the best way by defeating the Peruvian player Juan Pablo Varillas (ranked 70th). Besides his successful start, Grigor Dimitrov secured his 400th win on the ATP Tour, making him the 11th active player to reach that milestone.

In response to this achievement at the age of 32, Dimitrov gave an interview to the ATP Tour website:

“I’m a person that loves the game and I’ve, in a way, lived for the game,” Dimitrov said.

“I think this [milestone] has been something for me that was not the most important thing, but at the same time I try to do the right things for the sport itself. I think when you do these things and you win, it adds up.

“This is an achievement in itself. For me, I never set myself a goal to have 500 or 300 wins or whatever it is. You just never know how it is going to be, but I’ve been on Tour for 14 years now so it’s nice when you have that approval and you’ve done it yourself out there. You’ve gone out there 400 times and won, so I think it’s pretty cool,” he added.

With eight titles under his belt, Dimitrov reminisced about his first victory in 2009 at the Rotterdam Open when he was just 17 years old, defeating the then-world No. 23 Tomas Berdych:

“I remember everything about that day, about that match.”

“About two days before that match, I was supposed to play qualies in Rotterdam, and the night before the qualies started they decided to give me a wild card and I drew Tomas. Then I saw the draw and it was Tomas, and Rafa was up there, and he’d just come from winning the Australian Open.

“That match against Tomas was crazy. I was sliding, running around. I was just being myself out there really, and I never thought about, ‘Oh that’s my first [win]’ or something like that, it was just another match for me. I think this is something that at some point you need to remind yourself a little bit more.”

Dimitrov added that after 14 years on the tour, he still has the motivation to continue achieving success in the coming years.

“Nothing lasts forever, especially in our sport, so use that window as much as possible, enjoy as much as possible, love as much as possible, play as much as possible and how the cards fall, you never know. The only thing I can try to do is give 100 per cent of myself,” added former world No. 3.

“I’ve always been the type of person that never focused on [stats], but of course I’m going to rank it up there,” he said of hitting the 400-win mark. “One of my favourite stats, and I have it almost as a trophy. I haven’t won a tournament lately, but I feel like I’ve won something very special and that’s that. My career is far from over, so who knows, maybe I’ll reach 500?,” claimed Dimitrov.