Former world number three Grigor Dimitrov saw his ranking slump last year as he struggled with a shoulder injury, but the Bulgarian Thursday said he won't push himself too hard, too fast to return to the top of tennis.
The 28-year-old was laid low early in the season and was far from his best after he returned to action, although he did reach the US Open and Paris Masters semi-finals.
Dimitrov said 2019, where he failed to win a title, had been "quite a journey".
"It's going to be a year that I remember for the rest of my life," he said in Sydney ahead of the inaugural ATP Cup team event, his warm-up for the Australian Open Grand Slam.
"Yeah, the body checks out pretty good right now. I'm still monitoring a lot of my work, a lot that I'm going through.
"I kind of pace myself in the right way. I'm not in a rush, which is also a good thing." The shoulder problem was Dimitrov's first major injury and he said he plans to limit the number of tournaments he plays, particularly early in the season.
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"I'm not going to force myself to play too many tournaments early on and really look after the body. That's the number one thing," said Dimitrov, now ranked 20.
"Clearly I haven't competed for almost the past four months of the year, and so that itself brought a lot of doubts, and dropping a lot in the ranking and so on.
"But at the same time, I was able to kind of recover as quick as possible, and hopefully now I'm at a place that can only get better. I'm really going to focus on that."
"I don't know if I'm going to be a good coach. I can only share my experience, my thoughts with the guys."