How it all started? What caused one of the most consistent players of the last five years to lose his magic after touching glory? Dominic Thiem He has opened up in a chat with the official website of Roland Garros in which he exhaustively recounts all the factors that have led him to see himself as far from his real level and accumulate many months of competing without the expected prizes. The easy way to answer the above questions would have been to argue his serious wrist injury, but his steep decline cannot be explained for a long time solely by looking at that, since he returned to competition just over a year ago. It is worth internalizing his words to understand how difficult it is to be a tennis player and, also, to be aware of the terms in which his break with Nicolas Massu.
Reasons for your gambling crisis, results and confidence
“After my triumph in the US Open 2020 I had serious problems finding the necessary motivation. I felt totally empty, it was as if achieving something I had been chasing for so long made all the meaning of life as a tennis player vanish. I did not want to travel and I had a phase in which I had not trained less in my entire life. It took me a few months to feel strong enough to take things seriously again and train hard. That chip change occurred after I lost to Andújar in the first round of Roland Garros 2021. Possibly, my body could not withstand that sudden change in intensity and the injury was a consequence of it, the truth is that I don’t think it was a coincidence.” , reveals the Austrian, who was injured at the start of the tour on grass, in the tournament in Mallorca.
“It’s difficult to admit, but I perceived the injury as a good opportunity to take a break from tennis and reconcile with him. It was almost a relief knowing that I was going to have six or seven weeks in which I was going to be able to disconnect completely and then come back with a vengeance.” He acknowledged, despite the fact that nothing went as expected since he was out for about 7 months, reappearing at the Challenger in Marbella. He lost seven straight and struggled to gain competitive pace and confidence. “There was a lot of time when I was afraid to hit the ball, I couldn’t overcome the fear of a recurrence of the injury. For almost all of 2022, I thought about whether I was going to hurt myself again when I hit the ball and it’s very difficult like that “, explained a Dominic who offered green shoots at the end of the season, but they withered again at the start of 2023.
The retirement of professional tennis was closer than we can imagine
Although it is true that the Austrian’s attitude was always optimistic and to keep trying, when he is questioned about how mentally hard it must be for him to see that he does not recover his best version, he surprises with a chilling confession. “I came very close to losing hope completely, in fact, on a superficial level I would say I lost it. But deep inside me I kept a little light, an internal fire that made me believe in myself and want to try harder. In case not having felt that, I would have retired. There were very hard moments, but I always maintained the feeling that I had something left to offer in the world of tennis and that I wanted to try to bring it out”, he warns.
Professional break with Nicolás Massú
In the run-up to the Monte Carlo tournament, Thiem publicly announced that he would no longer work with Nicolas Massu, thus breaking one of the most lasting and successful professional idylls in tennis in recent times. “It helped me a lot to know that it was a mutual decision because when I asked him to talk last week, after the game in Estoril, and I told him my decision, he told me that if I hadn’t asked him to talk, it would have been him who would have told me that The best thing was to stop working together. In the world of sport it is very normal to want to open new chapters, and that is not affected by the good personal relationship you have or the successes you have achieved. I am very happy with everything I have experienced together Massú and also excited about what is to come”, says a Dominic Thiem that he already has a new work team, with which he will try to take flight.
