A tour de force by Dominic Thiem. After a three-set thriller, Austria’s number one is in the second round of the tennis tournament in the town hall.
Austria’s number one didn’t let a messed up first set stop him in his opening win against the American Tommy Paul, beating the world number 30. in 2:55 hours with 2:6, 7:6 (2) and 7:6 (6) and is thus in the second round of his home tournament. There on Thursday the winner of the game Daniil Medvedev, the number one of the tournament, will face the Georgian Nikolos Basilashvili.
In any case, the victory of the 29-year-old from Lichtenwörther was another step forward. Thiem’s goal remains to finish his comeback season in the top 100. The Lower Austrian is currently in 107th place in the live ranking.
Sentence one completely screwed up
Austria’s tennis star was completely lost in the first set. Thiem weakened in service, gave away his first two service games, Paul led 4-0 at lightning speed without having to push his performance limits. Lichtenwörther, who was still prone to errors, only wrote in the fifth game. Paul didn’t weaken, converted his first set ball after only 26 minutes with a forehand cross winner – 6:2. Thiem had more than no chance.
Furioses Comeback
The second round was much closer. Thiem served in the front, was in the front for the first time in the game and fended off two break opportunities for the US boy when the score was 1: 1 and one when the score was 2: 2. The Lichtenwörther involved his opponent more and more in longer rallies, became more dominant himself, fought for two chances in the fifth game to take the serve from the 25-year-old. But Paul was able to fend off both, the Lower Austrian himself missed the chance to break Paul at a score of 4:3. So the second set finally went into overtime, in which Thiem suddenly played big, clearly won the tie-break 7: 2 and used his second set ball.
The third round started extremely unluckily for Austria’s tennis star. Thiem created two break chances in the first game, but Paul fended off both. Immediately afterwards, the 29-year-old gave away his service to zero – 0:2. Thiem stayed in the match, fended off a break chance from the American when the score was 1: 4 and took Paul’s serve back to make it 4: 5. The third round also went into a tie-break, in which Paul was already leading 6:4, but missed two match points. Thiem scored four points in a row and won with nerves of steel.
Almost 8,000 fans ensured a final atmosphere. Thiem thanked the fans: “Without you I wouldn’t have won today. I followed the whole match and felt like I was the worse player.”
Thiem rated the victory as the second most important in Vienna: “It comes right after the final victory in 2019, before the duel with Tsonga in 2013,” he said in front of cheering fans.
Thiem: “I lost sight of reality”
