Shortly before the Australian Open, Dominic Thiem passed his endurance test after a cold. In competition conditions he performed well against Rafael Nadal.
Dominic Thiem had the biggest problem when everything was already over:”Where to put the garbage?”, he asked after the work was done and searched helplessly for a garbage can for his empty plastic bottles. An unloading station was missing in the Margaret Court Arena. Apart from that, everything else was present when Thiem made a match session with the Spanish superstar Rafael Nadal on a rainy Friday noon local time.
In the end, the 24-year-old Austrian lost 3 days before the start of the Australian Open with a narrow margin of 7:6,2:6,8:10. But Thiem was in good shape again after a feverish cold with sinus problems. At a score of 8:8 in the decisive round, Thiem, who did not train on Thursday because of his complaints, made a mistake in an overhead ball. A short time later Nadal, who was top seeded in Melbourne, won the rehearsal duel, which, to the surprise of many spectators and journalists, took place under competition conditions.
There was an umpire, a line-judge, ball kids. And this “for some unknown reason”, as British editor Stuart Fraser of the serious The Times twittered. Even the scoreboard was switched on – and the Hawk-Eye was active. The visitors applauded the beautiful rallies, many of which took place in the covered arena. For the two-time French Open semi-finalist Thiem, it was a successful endurance test after he lost in two sets against returning Novak Djokovic (Serbia) in an invitation tournament in Kooyong on Wednesday. Afterwards Thiem said that he was healthy again, but “of course not yet at 100 percent”.
The infection had already infected World Ranking List Fifth from Wiener Neustadt at the ATP tournament in Doha last week. Due to the complaints, the Dominator had not been able to compete against Gael Monfils (France), who later won the Qatar Open, for his semi-final.
Thiem will meet Guido Pella from Argentina in the first round of the Australian Open. The Lower Austrian has lost the previous two matches against 56 in the ATP ranking – last year in Chendu on Hartplatz and 2016 in Rio de Janeiro on sand. In Melbourne, Thiem had been in the last sixteen in 2017 for the first time, but lost to David Goffin from Belgium in four sets.