[ad_1]
At the age of 27, Dominic Thiem is the second Austrian to win a Grand Slam title after Thomas Muster. Thiem is someone who emancipated himself late from his coach and suddenly shows grit.
Dominic Thiem wins the US Open final.
Before the US Open final, Dominic Thiem had spoken about Andy Murray, the Briton who had lost his first four major finals, which once happened to Ivan Lendl. Thiem wanted to do better after final defeats in 2018 and 2019 in Paris against Rafael Nadal and in 2020 in Melbourne against Novak Djokovic. But when the match against Alexander Zverev began on Sunday, Thiem initially played as if paralyzed by fear of failure.
A few hours later, Thiem won the game and the tournament, after wild ups and downs, 2: 6, 4: 6, 6: 4, 6: 3, 7: 6 (8: 6). He broke to 1: 2 in the third set and made a 3: 5 deficit in the fifth set. For the first time in history, a US Open final had to be decided in five sets in a tie-break, and Thiem used third match point on this. “I hope my family, especially my grandparents, survived this match well,” Thiem said in the winning speech, a bit concerned. Thiem had cramps in the final phase. “I haven’t had that in years, it must have been due to stress. Faith was stronger today than the body. “
When I was 16, an illness stopped me
Dominic Thiem is the first new man on the list of winners of all four Grand Slam tournaments since Marin Cilic, who also triumphed in New York in 2014. Following the disqualification of Novak Djokovic a week before the final, it was clear that this would be a premiere. With Thiem, the new favorite has prevailed. The 27-year-old Austrian is not a representative of the much vaunted new generation around his partner and friend of four years Zverev, the Russian Daniil Medwedew or the Greek Stefanos Tsitsipas. Thiem was not a child prodigy, which was also due to the fact that at age 16 he was delayed by a bacterial illness that bothered him for years.
Now Thiem has achieved what he recently described in an interview with NZZ as his “goal in life”: to win a Grand Slam title. Before that, only one Austrian had succeeded, Thomas Muster, who triumphed at the French Open in 1995 and who joined Thiem’s supervisory staff earlier this year. The experiment failed miserably, and the collaboration only lasted two weeks.
After the final, the “New York Times” did not recall patterns, but some other players who won a Grand Slam title but not a second: Goran Ivanisevic, 2001 Wimbledon. Thomas Johansson, 2002 Australian Open. Andy Roddick, US Open 2003. Gaston Gaudio, French Open 2004. It was a time of upheaval before the years of overwhelming dominance by Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, this triumvirate that didn’t get in the way this time.
But whoever sees Thiem primarily as a beneficiary of the uneven cast or even as a one-hit wonder is doing him an injustice. Too often he has beaten Federer (5: 2 balance), Nadal (5: 9) and Djokovic (4: 7). Nadal, who would have competed as a defending champion in New York, has already been absent from many Grand Slam tournaments, this time only voluntarily rather than through injury. The Spaniard lost the last direct duel against Thiem, it was an important hard court quarter-final in January in Melbourne.
Federer has recently lost three times in a row to Thiem, there is hardly any more reason to rank the Swiss in the higher sports hierarchy than the Austrian. Federer’s last Grand Slam title was almost three years ago and he has not won the US Open since 2008.
“I mean, what the hell!”
Thiem has developed enormously in the past 2019 season. He became emancipated and separated from coach Günter Bresnik, who had coached him since he was nine years old and also directed his career as a coach. Thiem, whom the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” once called “Austria’s most beloved son-in-law”, showed more asperity.
When urged at the 2019 French Open to cancel a press conference because Serena Williams didn’t want to wait outside for her turn, Thiem didn’t hold back his anger. “I mean what the hell! It’s a joke, really.” What the hell is this? That’s a joke. And when Djokovic, Federer and Nadal suggested a relief fund for players in the 250-700 world rankings range due to the Corona crisis, Thiem did not want to show solidarity with these fellow travelers. «I myself was on the Future Tour for more than two years. There are not so few who just stay and see it as a good life, “he said in an interview with” Standard. “
Thiem has also become more versatile in terms of gameplay. He said on Sunday that with the first foray into a major semi-final in 2016 at Roland-Garros, he realized that one day he could win a Grand Slam tournament. “But I also thought my chances in the arena were by far the best.” But since last fall, when he won the tournaments in Beijing and Vienna and reached the ATP final in London, Thiem has also shone on hard courts.
The final qualification in Melbourne at the beginning of the year was the penultimate step, in New York he made the last. He also owes his newfound strength on hard court to his new coach, Nicolas Massu. The Chilean, 2004 Olympic champion in singles and doubles, has been training Thiem alongside his father Wolfgang since Bresnik’s cord was cut.
The French Open will start on Sunday in a week, Nadal will be there again, Djokovic anyway. Who knows what the first Grand Slam title will do with Thiem, if it will inspire him mentally or exhaust him in the first days and weeks, since the goal in life has been achieved.
