With a heavy heart, Dominic Thiem withdrew his entry for Wimbledon. The 2020 US Open winner confirmed this on Thursday evening in the tennis academy in Traiskirchen at the opening of the new floodlights on the ATC facility. Perhaps Thiem will celebrate another comeback at the ATP Challenger in Salzburg from July 4th, otherwise he will play in Baastad (July 11th), Gstaad and Kitzbühel in turn.
Thiem played his last match on the tour at the French Open in Paris. He then canceled scheduled appearances at two Challenger tournaments to take a training block. And that was very necessary, as he confirmed in Traiskirchen, because now he sees significant progress. “Actually I’m doing very well, especially since Paris it’s been really improving. For two and a half weeks after a few difficult days in Paris, where I had to get back into training, it’s been fun again,” said Thiem.
“It’s really progressed every day. Now I’m slowly seeing my old self coming back on the pitch. The shots are right, I’m moving well again, I’m fit and I’m seeing really good progress every day,” explained the 17- multiple ATP tournament winners. The training block was exactly what he needed. He didn’t quite say it that way, but his comeback on the tour may have come a little early. “Of course I eventually had to go back to competitive level. But looking back, it just wasn’t enough and too weak for the level, to be honest with you.”
No surprise
The fact that the 2020 US Open winner is now skipping Wimbledon does not come as a surprise. His current training in Traiskirchen takes place on clay and after Wimbledon he has scheduled the clay court tournaments in Baastad (July 11), Gstaad (18th) and the home event in Kitzbühel (25th). “It was still a slightly difficult decision because of course I want to play,” he said about the Wimbledon cancellation. “But also with regard to the next six months it was the smarter decision to move out.”
Thiem sustained a wrist injury at the lawn tournament in Mallorca on June 22 last year, which kept him away from the tour for 280 days. After his comeback, however, Thiem suffered seven defeats in seven appearances, so the Lichtenwörther withdrew to a training block. Next week Thiem will increase the confidence he gained in training and fly to Barcelona. “I fly and will train there for two weeks with Rublev and Khachanov, among others, which means I have top training partners.” In Traiskirchen with slightly weaker players everything is going great. Now he wants to “take his level of play to the next level” in Barcelona.
lying is over
“Now for the first time I can honestly say, while I’m not lying to myself or anyone else, that I’m on the right track and will soon be able to perform at my best again,” Thiem gained confidence. Thiem has now dropped to 352 in the ATP ranking. Thanks to his “protected ranking” he can now also use fixed starting positions despite the crash. The 2020 US Open winner has been without a win since May 12 of the previous year or has suffered ten consecutive defeats at tour level (without a defeat at the Challenger in Marbella).
After possibly Salzburg, Baastad, Gstaad and Kitzbühel, he wants to play Cincinnati and the US Open, possibly also in Montreal depending on the performance. He still has seven of his nine “protected ranking” tournaments left. But with increased confidence and soon reaching the first big goal of finally winning a match on the tour again, the next step should be possible. From Marbella to Paris, Thiem admitted, things didn’t go as planned in training either. “From Marbella to Paris inclusive, I lost 34 of 35 training sets against all possible players. Of course I don’t want to communicate how bad I really feel,” Thiem looked back. But now there has apparently been a click, his brother Moritz also reported that the bounce of the ball in Thiem’s training was now completely different than a few weeks ago.
