Ilya Ivashka is Dominic Thiem’s first opponent at the French Open 2018, and in round three the Austrian could face another qualifier: Ernest’s Gulbis, the ever-again-stablefellow.
Dominic Thiem will have had other worries in Lyon than to take a closer look at the qualification at the French Open. Knowing that his first assignment in this year’s Roland Garros campaign would be recruited from the competition that ended on Friday. It finally became Ilya Ivashka, a man Thiem had played. And almost unintentionally.
The performance of the Austrian number one at the Davis Cup in St. Pölten at the beginning of the year finally came as a bit of a surprise. Also for Ivashka, who lost to Thiem in two very narrow sets in the international match.
At that time Thiem had competed directly from practice, this time the Lichtenwörther is in absolute competition mode: Three three-set matches en suite are behind Thiem, in the final match of Lyon a big comeback had to be made to clinch the tenth tournament victory.
Ivashka started in second place in the Bois de Boulogne qualifying, has successfully dealt with his sport colleagues Domingues from Portugal, Galovic from Croatia and the eternal Ukrainian Stakhovsky. No business card, however, that will make Dominic Thiem tremble.
But he could see an old buddy again in round three: Ernests Gulbis, already a semi-finalist in Paris. On Friday Gulbis played on the new, pretty Court 18, defeating Alessandro Giannessi from Italy in three sets. The Latvian’s modus operandi is still that of the successful days: a hard first serve, the point should be scored at the latest in the second attempt with the generous forehand.
Gulbis is a regular guest at the academy of Thiem coach Günter Bresnik, working on his game there. Bresnik is the best technical trainer in the world, the 29-year-old from Riga remarked a few years ago here in Paris.
Gulbis starts the match against Gilles Müller, an open match, although the Luxembourger is seeded at position 29. Round two might be even easier to win with Matteo Berrettini or Oskar Otte, then Dominic Thiem could wait.
By the way, he doesn’t have to worry about missing the first training days in Roland Garros. The places in Lyon would be very similar to those at the French Open, says German Davis Cup captain Michael Kohlmann. And he must know – Kohlmann was also competing with Maximilian Marterer in the ATP World Tour 250 tournament that Thiem won against Gilles Simon in the final on Saturday after a big chase to catch up.