Dominic Thiem’s season to do date has been inconsistent and that theme followed Thiem to London in his opening round defeat to Grigor Dimitrov. The Austrian brought style but no substance to the O2 where as the Bulgarian brought style with substance and in a close match it can be seen as a major difference.
Dominic Thiem did not play a bad game but he played a game lacking killer instinct and if I’m honest too much of it was for show. There are two types of ‘show tennis’ in tennis, the first is show when you know you’ve won the point but the other distracts from the execution of the shot and we this from Thiem here.
Image Credit – Sky Sports
Too casual, no power or conviction. Crowd pleasing type of shot which he ended up losing.
Minutes later we see this from Grigor.
Image Credit – Sky Sports
Look at the way he approaches the net, he is there with that no nonsense movement and the racket head has winner written all over it!
I said in my preview of this one I think Thiem can learn from Dimitrov who is a show man but he backs it up more regularly than Thiem does. I do like Thiem but these points cost on the big occasion and this was another.
Goffin and Nadal next for Thiem, it get’s tougher!
