“I’m looking forward to playing hard once more. The conditions in Gstaad and here were also difficult. The warmer it is, the more the balls knock off at high altitude,” said Thiem, who added: “But the second sand season was really positive. When the first disappointment is gone, I can look back on it well.” In any case, the series with quarter-, semi- and quarter-finals was okay.
Now it is important that he uses the remaining time until departure to Ohio to get to the USA in good shape. Fitness units and then another training block are on the program before the little US tour starts. Cincinnati will kick off (from August 14th), Winston-Salem will follow the week following and then the US Open from August 29th. Thiem received a wild card for the last two tournaments.
Careful tournament planning
A “free ticket” for an Austrian is an absolute rarity, especially for the Grand Slam tournament. “It’s crazy for me that I can use the ‘protected’ for another tournament,” said Thiem. He is being rewarded for his performance in 2020, when he celebrated his biggest triumph yet with the title at Flushing Meadows.
After things didn’t go as well as hoped in Kitzbühel, the Lower Austrian can still use every “protected ranking”. Thiem will be around 170th in the world rankings on Monday. Of his total of nine opportunities to get into the tournaments with the ranking at the time of his injury (sixth place), he has used up five so far. For Cincinnati he takes the sixth, he can redeem the remaining three up to and including the week of October 24th. The Vienna Stadthallen tournament is taking place there, but it has also reserved a wild card for him.
“Still with the handbrake on”
After Vienna there is no more bonus, it is the current ranking that counts. It goes without saying that Thiem would have liked to take a lot of pressure off the rankings on sand. A title in Kitzbühel almost made it possible for him to return to the top 100.
“I often still play with a certain handbrake on, which I only release late in tournaments. The level just has to keep getting higher, even when I’m nervous and my arm isn’t that loose,” said Thiem self-critically. And yet he also tries to calm down. “What happened now was completely normal: now everything has fallen off a bit.” He now wants to catch up with a training block – “plus one more”.
ATP 250 tournament in Kitzbuehel
(Austria, 597,900 euros, sand)
