Four weeks, two Masters 1000 tournaments in Madrid and Rome, then Lyon and the highlight of the French Open. Dominic Thiem is entering the hot phase of the clay court season. Last year’s finalist travelled to the Spanish capital on Thursday evening and wants to make the necessary progress towards Roland Garros. His coach Günter Bresnik has recently noticed progress in training.
“The training is quite good now, I must say. You have to see what it looks like when you play points,” Bresnik explained to the APA on Thursday. In six days Thiem had trained very intensively.
And in Madrid, too, the hard work continues even before the tournament begins: “Sparring without end is already planned for the next few days: with Nadal, Dimitrov, Pouille, Djokovic. He trains what he can,” the 57-year-old from Lower Austria reported.
But the certainty where Thiem is now in competition will only be shown by the tournament itself. Bresnik compared the world ranking seventh to a Formula 1 car. “Put the car in the garage. They pimp it up, change the oil, fill it up with gasoline – now he has to drive. “You don’t know how you’ll drive in the first lap when the car gets another 30 horsepower.”
Bresnik also attaches great importance to on-site training with world-class players such as clay court king Rafael Nadal. In the Südstadt, in any case, “definitely went a little further”. “How he has improved during the training days is clear to everyone.”
Bresnik is not impressed by the large number of points that Thiem has just scored in Madrid (Finale/600), Rome (semi-final/360) and Paris (semi-finals/720) in 2017. And the long-term trainer doesn’t believe in “defending points” anyway. On the contrary.
“The train of thought is fundamentally wrong. This is given a meaning that it simply does not have. I don’t care how many points he made at the same time last year! “To think that someone is playing well and wants to win is the right approach for me.”
1,660 points, almost half of all points that Thiem has are at stake. A bad four weeks puts the top ten position at risk. But Bresnik doesn’t believe in such bills. “It doesn’t matter. If I play badly, then I’m not there. What good is it if I’m in the top ten and play badly every week,” asks Bresnik.
That was meaningless to him. “I’d rather be number 200 and win every match. The ranking has no value. People don’t understand that and neither does he, because he is constantly being asked about it.”
It won’t be more difficult if you lose a better settlement. Finally, Thiem also made it into the top ten. “And a Tsitsipas is currently playing well and will play the final in Barcelona. The important thing is that I play well. That’s all a tennis player should worry about. That’s finally understood, preferably by everyone, first and foremost by Dominic.”
And Bresnik von seinem Schützling 2018 has not seen this “good play” very often. It was best at the beginning of the year in Doha, before a cold immediately before the Australian Open threw Thiem back.
Then came the five-week break with the ankle injury. He played a good match against Djokovic in the last two quarter-finals in Monte Carlo and Barcelona, where he halfway showed what was expected of him. The rest was weak,” Bresnik said dryly.
Neither the defeats against Nadal nor against the up-and-coming Greek Stefanos Tsitsipas upset Bresnik. “It’s about how it comes about. There have been some things that are or hopefully have been weak. He’s got to get that out of the way as soon as possible.”
By the way, Bresnik leaves Madrid out like every year and will travel from Rome with Thiem again. Between Rome and Paris, Thiem has inserted the successor tournament in Lyon.