Bulgaria’s top-ranked male tennis player Grigor Dimitrov has been labelled as "one to watch" on the atpworldtour.com website ahead of the Open13 tennis tournament, held in Marseilles on February 14-22 2009.

Dimitrov, who was awarded a wild card for the tourney, will have the difficult task to face second seed and local favourite Gilles Simon in the first round. Simon won the tournament in 2007 and will be trying hard to put a good performance in front of his home crowd.

Simon, ranked eighth in the world, was the one who in 2008 knocked out current world number three Novak Djokovic from the tournament. The Serb, ranked top in Marseilles, will make his return to the ATP World Tour after the Australian Open, playing against Frenchman Jeremy Chardy, the former Wimbledon boys champion, who recently reached his first ATP Tour final at the SA Tennis Open in Johannesburg.

Dimitrov, who won the junior titles both at Wimbledon and the US Open in 2007, will take on his second ATP top ten player in consecutive weeks. A week earlier in Rotterdam, he won the respect of world number one Rafael Nadal after making him sweat (7-5, 3-6, 6-2) in the second round of the ABN AMRO World Tennis Tournament.

"He will certainly be a great player and for sure reach the top 10," Nadal said after the match.

On February 16, Dimitrov jumped 77 places in the ATP ranking after his win over Tomas Berdych, ranked 23rd in the ATP rankings, in the first round in Rotterdam, and is now world number 401 with 157 points. The second-best ranked Bulgarian male player is Ivailo Traikov on 426, with 144 points.

Bulgaria's highest ranked female player Tsvetana Pironkova is world number 51 with 1166 points.