If the saying about the botched dress rehearsal and the successful performance is correct, then Dominic Thiem can hope for an improvement at the US Open from next week in New York. Of course, this will also be necessary if the world number three does not want to pack his bags early at the first Grand Slam tournament after his Australian Open final. Because at the Masters 1000 tournament in the same place he returned to the ATP tour with a “catastrophic performance”, as he himself found after the 2: 6, 1: 6 against the Serb Filip Krajinovic.
Now it is important to make the best use of the training time gained through the early end in order to look better at the hard court Grand Slam tournament that starts next week. “I now have a week and enough time to assemble the missing building blocks and hope that I will perform better then,” said Thiem.
Austria’s figurehead is not too worried about the classic false start. “Losing 2: 6.1: 6 is never nice or good for your self-confidence, but I’ve actually trained quite well the last few days, so I know that it can quickly turn in the other direction.”
He played his last game on the tour on February 22nd in the quarterfinals of Rio de Janeiro. “It was the first competition match in a long time, and I’m generally not one who starts well after such a long break from competition. I always have my problems, so that doesn’t really worry me,” said Thiem, who was in the Corona break of the tour completed several show competitions and done well.
“A competition match cannot be compared with an exhibition. That is something completely different, the tension is completely different,” explained Thiem.
Against Krajinovic, the Austrian never found his usual game and was therefore at a losing position. When the world number 32 is served. he only made two points in the whole game, a break was a long way off. “Actually, I didn’t really feel comfortable with a single stroke right from the start, had problems with timing, and I also felt relatively few first serves,” explained Thiem.
Krajinovic, who remained victorious at the beginning against the Italian qualifier Salvatore Caruso – Thiem had a bye as number two on the seeding list in the first round – took the serve from his opponent twice per set and was allowed to win the second match against a top ten Players cheer. “I started very well, played very aggressively and Thiem didn’t play well. Everything went well for me, I deserved the win,” said the 28-year-old.
Murray bezwingt zverev
The first duel with Thiem on the tour will be remembered for a long time. Incidentally, that ended just like the only previous meeting of the two at Challenger level – but with a different winner. In 2013, Thiem won the semi-finals against Krajinovic 6: 2.6: 1 on the way to the Challenger title in Casablanca. Krajinovic now faces the Hungarian qualifier Marton Fucsovics, who also caused a surprise with a 7: 5, 4: 6, 6: 2 against the Bulgarian Grigor Dimitrov.
Alexander Zverev’s death came even more surprising. The German lost 3: 6, 6: 3, 5: 7 to the now 33-year-old ex-ranking first Andy Murray.
For the Scot, who fell back to position 134 due to back problems, it was the first win against a top ten player since May 2017. Novak Djokovic, on the other hand, was happy to win a favorite. The top seeded Serb prevailed in the second round of the $ 4.674 million tournament on the Flushing Meadows facility against Ricardas Berankis from Lithuania 7: 6, 6: 4. (apa / red)
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