Feast is over for Bedene
ALJAZ BEDENE found himself seated next to his third-round opponent Gilles Muller at the Sticks ’n’ Sushi restaurant in Wimbledon on Thursday night.
After losing in straight sets, he grimaced at the suggestion that he might have lobbed beef tataki over the Luxemburger, though some advance target practice would have been useful.
The adopted Briton lacked the tools to defeat the 34-year-old No 16 seed, admitting his lefthanded opponent’s subtle service variations were simply too much.
‘He has a unique style and mixes it a lot,’ Bedene said. ‘All four serves. You don’t know what’s going to happen.’
Slovenia-born Bedene was engagingly candid about the opportunity he missed, when he had a game point to lead 3-0 in the second set, having lost the first on a tiebreak.
‘My mood changed then,’ he admitted. ‘A bit of doubt came in, that it was not my day to win.’
He identified self-belief as an area of his game he could work on, adding: ‘I lost twice to Gilles before today.’
No one can accuse 27-year-old Bedene of lacking psychological mettle this week. He displayed it in spades to emerge the winner from his marathon second-round win over Ivo Karlovic — the first match here since 2002 to feature four tiebreaks.
And he displayed a very clear idea of where his game is going.
‘My aim is to get into the top 30 and be seeded at the Australian Open,’ said Bedene, who last year gave deep thought to whether he wanted to continue his tennis career. The target is one he had set himself when deciding: ‘I want to play tennis and do whatever that’s right to be good.’
He has never gone beyond the No45 he reached in November 2015 and there were fleeting flashes of what he has to bring as he lost in the searing heat of Court No2. He produced a sublime lob to break Muller and lead 2-0 in the second set.
The uncertain part of the future is whether he will switch allegiance back to Slovenia for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, after an arbitration hearing upheld the International Tennis Federation’s decision that he cannot play for Great Britain.
Bedene said in May that he may revert, though he will first sit down with British Davis Cup captain Leon Smith, who watched his match yesterday.
‘We’ve got time to talk now,’ Bedene said.