That’s it for Dominic Thiem at the French Open: Thiem lost to the Finn in the second round of qualification after a largely weak performance Otto Virtanen with 2:6 and 5:7.
von tennisnet.com
last edited: May 22, 2024, 2:51 p.m
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Good atmosphere, fought well, but deserved to lose: That’s how you can sum up Dominic Thiem’s last appearance at the French Open. Thiem ultimately had no chance against the Finn Otto Virtanen and lost clearly to the world number 156 with 2:6 and 5:7.
Virtanen always dominates the pitch
Dominic Thiem had to give up his first service game. The Finn’s powerful forehand dictated the game. He made more mistakes but also more direct points. In his second service game, the Finn made a few too many mistakes and Thiem was able to get the break back straight away. But Thiem couldn’t find his service and had to give up his second service – for zero. Particularly noticeable: Thiem almost only acted with the second serve. He barely got through his first one. With the consequence that Thiem couldn’t even score 50 percent of the points, even though his first serve landed in the field.
What the Austrian could rely on, however, was the audience. At his last French Open, French fans tried everything to support Thiem. The sympathies were clearly on the 30-year-old’s side.
In the second sentence it gets tighter
But Virtanen continued to be humorless. He scored his points either with his serve or forehand and Dominic Thiem rarely found his way into the offensive. Consequently, the first set went to the Finn 6-2 after a weak performance by Thiem and a completely botched forehand stop by the Austrian.
In the second sentence the same picture: Otto Virtanen determines what happens and Thiem can only react. With the score at 1:3 from Thiem’s point of view, the momentum seems to change briefly again when the Austrian is able to take the serve from the Finn and, with loud support from the fans, makes it 2:3 with his own service and a little later equalizes to 3:3 . Chants of “Domi, Domi” echo over Suzanne Lenglen again and again.
Beautiful scenes at the end
The next games were even, but at 4:5 Thiem had to serve against losing the match. Now Thiem was able to dig up one or two more shots from the Finn and Virtanen lost some of his precision. So it was 5:5 – and when Thiem was on the break to make it 6:5 at 0:30, it started to rain, the tarpaulin was pulled up and both players had to leave the court. After the rain interruption, Thiem earned a break point, but was unable to use it and had to serve again a little later at 5:6 to avoid losing the match. Here Thiem was able to fend off two match points, one with a forehand right on the line. But the third match point sealed his exit with a forehand error. In the end it was 2:6, 5:7.
At the end there were emotional scenes. The fans celebrated Thiem with a standing ovation for minutes and the organizers presented him with a trophy for his performance at the tournament. Thiem thanked everyone for the support over the years at Roland Garros with tears in his eyes.
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Thiem Dominic
2024-05-22 12:15:00
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