Dominic Thiem has been the heir apparent of the ATP’s “Next Generation” for so long that, at 27, he is starting to age out of that group.
With Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal already sheltering in Europe, and Novak Djokovic joining them on the continent—after his self-inflicted, unforced error that bounced him from the tournament on Sunday—Dominic Thiem is now the highest-ranked player remaining in the 2020 US Open.
For years, tennis observers have expected the athletic, intensely physical Austrian to break out of the field and snatch a Slam. Instead, the Big Three have stubbornly refused to cede the stage. Well into their second decades on tour, they have hogged almost all the spoils.
Now the—dare we say it?—veteran Thiem has his big shot.
“That’s the only strange thing about the fact that the Big Three are not around, that I’m probably one of the oldest players left,” said Thiem, the No, 2 seed.
“That is surreal to me.”
What is real is that like the rest of the remaining field, Thiem is still hoping to capture his first major.
The Austrian has been a major finalist three times. And three times he has gone home without the trophy.
Nadal defeated him in two finals at Roland Garros. Djokovic stopped his quest earlier this year at the Australian Open.
But now there’s no Djokovic, no Nadal, no Federer standing in his way. The pressure is on, right?
According to the Austrian, there’s no extra pressure.
“I mean, there is a difference that none of these three are left in the draw. That's the only difference,” said Thiem after his win on Monday.
“But for me, personally, it never mattered. I just always tried to focus on my next match. My focus or my concentration, it's the same. It doesn't matter if I play one of the Big Three members or if I play somebody else.
“For myself and the other remaining players left in the draw, it doesn’t matter at all if the Big Three are here or not. I think everybody just wants their hands on this trophy,” said Thiem.
“Of course, it's probably a little bit of a bigger chance for all of us to win [our] first Slam, but basically the things didn't change that much, at least for myself.”
Does that sound like someone trying to convince himself that, contrary to appearances, the landscape is unchanged?
Thiem has long proved himself to be a big match player—just not the biggest-match player.
“I love the Slams because most of the times I did well in Slams,” said Thiem.
That is undoubtedly true. He is 64-25 at majors. Thiem is one of the very few active players to own multiple wins over the Big Three: four wins against Djokovic, whom he extended to five grueling sets in the final of this year’s Australian Open; five victories over Nadal, including at the Australian Open and Masters 1000 events; and five (of seven) against Federer.
At the beginning of this year’s campaign, there were doubts about Thiem, who lost his only match since February, at the ATP Masters 1000 Cincinnati, winning a measly three games against No. 26 Filip Krajinovic of Serbia. And reports of how fast the courts were playing in Flushing didn’t seem to bode well for Thiem, who requires more time for his big-windup groundstrokes.
Yet through four matches, Thiem has surrendered only a single set. In the second round, he beat former US Open champion Marin Cilic convincingly, and he dominated the fast-rising Felix Auger-Aliassime, the 20th-seeded Canadian, to advance to the quarters.
Thiem, like Nadal, is a more natural dirtballer. And in Nadal’s absence at this year’s Open, Thiem has taken his place deep behind the baseline, nearly at the backstop. From there, he earns extra time to wind up and crush heavy topspin groundstrokes off both wings.
That is how the Austrian and the Spaniard played at one of the greatest matches in recent US Open history, the 2018 quarterfinal. Nadal and Thiem went a distant toe-to-toe in a five-hour, slugfest that ended after 2am in a fifth-set-tiebreak win for Nadal. It was a feast of shotmaking and grit for the ages, and it, as much as Thiem’s final losses at other majors, established him as “the most-likely-to” after the Big Three were done.
Thiem now plays No. 21 seed Alex de Minaur of Australia in the quarterfinal on Wednesday night.
Should both Thiem and the Russian Daniil Medvedev win their quarterfinal matchups, the only two men who have been to a Slam final would meet in the semi. (Medvedev lost the US Open final last year in his own thrilling five-setter to Nadal.)
About this year’s pandemic edition of the US Open, Thiem said, “It's super different. It's also [an] experience we have to do, actually, because these weird times don't allow anything else.
“That's how I also went into this Slam. It's something completely new, a new experience.”
What would also be entirely new for Thiem would be to walk away with the title.
