What exactly happened in those four and a half hours in which Dominic Thiem lost a 2-0 set lead against Pablo Andujar at the beginning of the French Open and at 6: 4, 7: 5, 3: 6, 4: 6, 4: 6 experienced his first first round defeat in Paris? Thiem doesn’t really know himself. And what will, what should happen now? That too is not yet entirely clear.
“I have no idea yet, I have to think about the grass season. Then I’ll decide whether I might tackle it earlier. Now I have to digest the defeat,” said the Lower Austrian, whose big goal after two finals in Roland Garros (2018 and 2019) as well as the victory at the US Open in the previous year was also the coup in Paris at his favorite tournament. If he had been positively surprised overseas in the previous year, the reverse has now occurred. Sleepless in New York, perplexed in Paris, so to speak.
That he has not been able to improve since the triumph at that time, but even – albeit at a high level and with some partial successes such as the Masters final and the semifinals in Madrid a few weeks ago – slipped into a medium-term crisis with motivation problems and a break, he would have not expected. “I expect a bit from myself that from now on I will approach the really big tournaments and really big matches with more ease and play even better,” he had said on record at the time.
But almost the opposite has happened, marked by the shock of defeat, he went hard with himself immediately after the match. “Forehand catastrophe, backhand catastrophe, everything cramped, not relaxed enough. First serve too cramped, so the percentage is missing, and a few km / h are missing,” he analyzed.
In general, he played way too defensively. “I fell back into really bad patterns today. That is of course difficult to understand.” The seven-week break was still the right one, and the training would have given him confidence.
“Heavier than expected”
Thiem therefore does not believe in questioning everything in a kind of panic reaction. “I think I have to turn things around myself. And that the people I have are best suited to help me with this.” However, the Lower Austrian admitted that the matches were “more difficult than expected”. “That is of course difficult to understand.” His way back? “A mixture of a lot of training and also matches so that I can get back to my best form.”
The fact that the lawn season is approaching may not necessarily help. However, the successful Paris appearances in the past few years had required a certain breath in the short lawn season. He has already proven that Thiem can also play excellently on grass: in 2016 he was the only Austrian to date to win an ATP lawn title in Stuttgart, and in 2017 Wimbledon could have gone further than the round of 16. At that time he failed in the round of the last 16 in five sets to Tomas Berdych. Thiem did not mention the tournament in Stuttgart, which will take place this year in the second week of the French Open due to the corona pandemic. He may now change his mind. The Mercedes Cup in Stuttgart is organized by “emotion”, its manager Herwig Straka. After the match he didn’t want to talk about it, the defeat was in the foreground. “I’ve had early losses before,” he said. “But it’s particularly strange here.”(what/art)
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