Australian Open: Thiem in front of Melbourne:”Hellishly fast courts.”

Dominic Thiem signed up for the Australian Open shortly before the start. The Lower Austrian expects “two different tournaments”because of the fast courts in Melbourne.

From Ulrike Weinrich from Melbourne

A special guest had sneaked into Dominic Thiem’s press conference unnoticed. The Frenchwoman Kristina Mladenovic suddenly sat in the last row of the third-largest interview room in the new media center and listened eagerly to her friend’s comments. The 24-year-old gave the all-clear on health issues, among other things:”I’m fine again,”Thiem said with a view to his cold, which has now been cured, and revealed:”This time the jetlag was a bit stronger, because I came here unfitly”.

The feverish infection had already infected the fifth in the world rankings 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. At an invitational tournament in Kooyong last Wednesday, Thiem was “not yet at 100 percent” and lost to returning Novak Djokovic (Serbia) in two sets:”The match came too early for me.”

In the first few days in Melbourne, the French Open semi-finalist took a somewhat slower turn at first. On Saturday he trained twice and “defied the rain”, as he stated with satisfaction. In his first unit, Thiem had caught a window of time without rainfall, and in the afternoon he was allowed to enter the covered Hisense Arena. The surface on the third-largest court of the Yarra River facility is very different from that on the outdoor courts,”They are incredibly fast. Two different tournaments are likely to be played here,”said the protégé of successful coach Günter Bresnik about the different conditions.

The top favourites of the first major in 2018 are Roger Federer (Switzerland) and Rafael Nadal from Spain. Behind it came “a few question marks, then Sascha Zverev and I – and maybe Kyrgios and Dimitrov”, said the power player from Wiener Neustadt.

Thiem will meet Guido Pella from Argentina in the first round of the Happy Slam on Tuesday. He had 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. But Thiem is confident:”Grand Slams are something completely different. I play well, much better than I did at the end of last year,”he said, preparing for the season in Tenerife. In Melbourne, the Dominator had been in the last sixteen for the first time in 2017, but lost to David Goffin from Belgium in four sets.