Dominic Thiem on the advantages of tennis touring with his friend Kiki Mladenovic and the myth of the “sand court specialist”.
Dominic Thiem can almost only win for the rest of the year: This is the positive news after the difficult last few weeks, which began with a shoulder injury in Kitzbühel – and continued with an early out in Hamburg, a cold with a fever and an equally early defeat in Toronto as well as a cancellation in Cincinnati.
In New York everything is going to be different. Just there, where Thiem had picked up a mental crack for the rest of the season after leading 2-0 after a bitter bankruptcy against Juan Martin del Potro last year.
Thiem and hard court? For many fans not a suitable duo anyway, but the Lichtenwörther himself does not see the matter so dramatically. On the contrary, because Thiem does not want to call himself a sand court specialist, as many call him. “I won my first major title in Acapulco on hard court and in the same year I also won Stuttgart, on grass. There was no talk of a specialist,” Thiem explained in an interview with tennis magazine. It was only last year when he played so well on clay and lost so badly elsewhere – as he did against del Potro. Because he was injured in Indian Wells and Miami this year and just lost in Australia, “this picture has intensified. A picture he now wants to edit at the US Open.
Thiem knows, however, that he has to play hard court tennis. “I want to change things, but not the stroke technique.” I have to be much closer to the baseline in the long run than I do on sand.
The stay in New York also has private benefits for the 25-year-old. In Flushing Meadows, his friend Kristina Mladenovic is also at his side, at about twelve tournaments a year. “With holidays at the end of the year and in the middle of the season I see them a total of 20 weeks a year. That would never be possible with a woman who leads another life,” Thiem explained. Another advantage is that Mladenovic knows how tennis life works and understands when he is not there. And: “She understands when I’m in a bad mood after a lost match.”
In any case, he has a great respect for the Frenchwoman. “All in all, she’s insanely tough,” Thiem raved. “She does her sporty thing on the ladies’ tour, I can only take my hat off to that. “I’m more sensitive than she is when things aren’t going so well.”
However, a joint appearance on the tennis court seems unlikely. “She’s so good at doubles, I’d only embarrass myself,” Thiem joked. In any case, doubles and mixed don’t play a role for him at the Majors, “the individual is simply too important to me. On the other hand… somehow, somewhere, sometime? “Perhaps in the distant future, when we say goodbye in Paris”, says Thiem, “one can already think about it.”