Novak Djokovic is two wins away from holding all four majors for the second time in his career. A win against Dominic Thiem and then either Roger or Rafa will complete that for him first he must get past this man.
Is this the man to stop Novak Djokovic?
By his own admission Dominic Thiem has said he didn’t start the tournament great but has now seen off Gael Monfils and the impressive Karen Khachanov in straight sets to advance to his fourth consecutive semi-final at Roland Garros.
Novak Djokovic leads the head to head at 6-2 winning 3 of their meetings on clay compared to Thiem’s 2 on the surface.
Their most recent meeting was in Madrid and I left there thinking to myself how the hell did Thiem not win there with Novak scrapping through 7-6 7-6.
The performances of Dominic Thiem of late in the competition have reignited my belief he can win here.
Earlier on in the tournament I was a bit underwhelmed but he has grown into the tournament so well and was ruthless against Khachanov.
Djokovic likewise was impressive against Zverev, he was helped by double faults at three pivotal moments in the first two sets with two of them clinching the respective sets for Novak but overall he played to a high level.
I don’t know who I fancy to take this one.
I think Thiem is playing at a high enough level to see this through but it will take something big from him to do it. He has done it before but Novak is peaking at the majors right now on a 26 match winning streak stretching back to Wimbledon last year.
If Dominic Thiem can play his game and keep the errors down like he did against Khachanov & Monfils he can do this.
In the two matches against these two his stats are;
54 service games
26 unforced errors
56 winners
26 unforced errors in 6 sets of tennis which averages out as just over 4 a set.
Djokovic likewise has not been giving much away and grinding as we know he can in rallies conceding just 18 unforced errors against Zverev. In the second set he his just three against the German.
Who do I think will win?
I would love Thiem to win it and I do think he is in the best possible place right now in his game however Novak is the number one and in majors has been pretty flawless.
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