Thiem wins his first Grand Slam a la Massú

An outlet. The corollary of a dreamy year and a half. That was for Dominic Thiem the celebration after winning his first grand slam, after four attempts, three with Nicolás Massú as coach. The number three in the world came with favoritism against Alexander Zverev (6th). His impeccable passage through the US Open and the work of the last two seasons generated the illusion that he could finally be crowned in a contest of this category. And he did it by winning 2-6, 4-6, 6-4, 6-3 and 7-6 (6), in one of the most exciting matches that New York can remember.

In his first major final, the 23-year-old German felt at first as if he had been playing these instances all his life. From a distance, the hand of his new coach, David Ferrer, was also noticed, giving him a quota of struggle that had only been discovered in recent weeks. He was a very tough rival.

Thiem, for his part, entered as if it had been reset. Without explosion and with a lot of fragility in his serve. Just 37% of first services and only 29% of points won with the second was the statistic that marked an opening set, where his rival broke him twice. The ward of the Viñamarino, who at that point looked like a caged lion, did not hurt with the return, so it was not surprising that Sascha closed the first chapter in half an hour.

A similar trend had the following sleeve. Breaks in the third and fifth games gave Ferrer a comfortable lead. And while Domi recovered one of the breaks, it was not enough to change his luck in that set. The lack of spark and the depth of the Teuton structured a scenario of maximum complexity. But there the epic appeared, the same one that characterized Massú in his exploits as a player.

Zverev loosened. When everything seemed to indicate that he would sentence the match quickly, mainly after breaking again in the third game, Thiem reacted and recovered the break. The German began to show some cracks in his service (one of his sections that still needs to be solved), while the Austrian improved in precision and also his attitude; He managed to get out of very difficult situations and transferred all the pressure to his rival, who could not sustain his serve in the tenth game and thus the match went to a fourth set.

The future of the meeting began to generate very different sensations. While Massú’s manager was recovering his best tone, his adversary looked worried and making bad decisions. The Austrian sensed it; he began to move it from side to side and broke him in the eighth game, to bring everything to a last quarter, which became a heart attack. The world three broke at the start, but Sascha hit him back immediately and got a second wind.

Despite that, the Wiener Neustadt-born put the whole hierarchy first. Even when Zverev served for the game. He did not stop believing and in the eleventh game he managed to break. However, the celebration was delayed and everything was defined in a narrow tie break. In addition, he became the first tennis player to come back two sets against to win the US Open in the Open Era and the first player born in the 90s to touch the sky in one of the big four.

Massú, meanwhile, became the third Chilean coach, after Juan Núñez (with Arantxa Sánchez in 1989) and Patricio Rodríguez (with Andrés Gómez in 1990), to win a Grand Slam. But beyond that, he added a new chapter to his impeccable legend as a national sports hero.