Dominic Thiem optimistic: "See my old self again"
Dominic Thiem was there on Thursday evening at the opening ceremony of the completed outdoor facility of the ATC in Traiskirchen - and gave information about his current form and further plans in 2022.
by Florian Goosmann
last edit: Jun 17, 2022, 11:42 am
After a few difficult days after the French Open, training is fun again. "Slowly I'm seeing my old self again on the pitch," Thiem explained to a small media group on site . He sees good progress every day, would have needed such a training block some time ago. In hindsight it was just not enough for this level and not good enough."
Thiem specified the "not enough": "From Marbella to Paris inclusive, I lost 34 of 35 training sets against all possible players," he admitted . Of course, he didn't want to communicate that things were going so unevenly, he also had hopes of fighting his way through the match. At the beginning he couldn't even hurt the youth players in Traiskirchen with his tennis, but now he realizes that he can do more and more damage again.
The reason for the apparently early return? "I just wanted to get back on the tour," said the 28-year-old. After the ten months he had competitions again, playing matches. In retrospect, what he is doing now - i.e. the training block - "was smarter".
Clever, on the other hand: the cancellation for Wimbledon that has now taken place.
Thiem plans: Maybe Salzburg, definitely Kitzbühel
Thiem also hinted that he had lost some of the fun after the big goal achieved with the US Open victory, but also afterwards during the injury period. "Somewhere in the last two or three weeks there has been a point where joy has returned extremely. I haven't had that for a long time. I was happy about good shots and good training days," said Thiem
Thiem plans to fly to Barcelona next week to train with Andrey Rublev and Karen Khachanov to "take my game to the next level." After that, a tournament can start at the Challenger in Salzburg (July 4th to 10th) - but Thiem wants to wait for the coming training days for this. However, the tournament starts in Bastad, Gstaad and Kitzbühel would be certain. And depending on how things go, the US tour with Montreal and Cincinnati, then the US Open.
"I would like to play really well again in Kitzbühel and inspire the audience," said Thiem, who also hopes to get into the main draw for the Australian Open 2023 on his own, i.e. via his official ranking.
Thiem is currently only ranked 352 in the world.