ATP: Interview with Thiem coach Günter Bresnik – “Tennis from another star”.

Günter Bresnik looks back on a successful 2018 season with his protégé Dominic Thiem. Three tournament victories, the final at the French Open, the possible qualification for the ATP final. The star coach about his protégé’s improvements, the dispute over the Davis Cup and the player he would love to coach.

tennisnet: Mr. Bresnik. The 2018 tennis season is entering its final phase. How does your protégé Dominic Thiem compare to the past years?

Günter Bresnik: Dominic will certainly be a little fresher. From my point of view, he plays tennis much better. At the US Open Dominic wasn’t really fresh, because he was sick two weeks before. He only had ten days to prepare – but then started to play extremely well. He confirmed this at the Davis Cup and especially in St. Petersburg, where he competed in the best tournament of the whole year. There he played all the games very well.

tennisnet: Has Dominic Thiem been able to keep form?

Bresnik: Before leaving for Shanghai, Dominic was sick again for a few days. A minimal chill, but at the moment it is in a form where for me intensive tennis training is secondary. In my opinion, the playing level is very, very high.

tennisnet: At the US Open Dominic Thiem showed at least two outstanding matches: Against Kevin Anderson and Rafael Nadal. How do you look back?

Bresnik: The earlier part is always more important to me than the later one. And the first match at the US Open, where Dominic played really well, was against Anderson. We could only increase the load very slowly during training, the matches at the beginning were not yet outstanding. Against Steve Johnson and Taylor Fritz, they were difficult games. Against Mirza Basic, well, there’s just a class difference. But against Anderson Dominic played very well, served well and returned well. These are the two areas in which I still see the greatest potential for improvement.

tennisnet: Then why did the return work so well?

Bresnik: We have simply trained this very intensively. And against Anderson and then against Nadal Dominic returned very well. Also in St. Petersburg, where I liked the games against Struff and Medvedev very much. The setback must work against these players. And I liked that very much.

tennisnet: In the matches against Anderson and Nadal it seemed as if Dominic knew exactly what to do from the first to the last ball. Sometimes it didn’t seem that way in the past.

Bresnik: Dominic always knows what he has to do. This is my favorite discussion with the experts: I claim that 70 to 90 percent of the mistakes in a tennis match are technical in nature. There’s no tactical error in that. If Dominic feels that he can return the ball to the field, no matter from where, no matter whether with slice or not, blocked – if he notices that he always gets the ball into the game neutrally, then it is very easy to construct a point afterwards. That’s what a Djokovic, Nadal, Federer, Wawrinka do. You can also rank the world according to the percentage of returns brought into the game. The higher the percentage, the further ahead the players are. The same applies to Alexander Zverev. That’s a player who brings a lot of returns into the game. Then 60, 70 percent of the first serves come back into the field – and then I can build up my game from the baseline. And the best players in it are grandmasters.

tennisnet: Where do you see Dominic Thiem in this context?

Bresnik: Dominic is an excellent baseline player, but his success has always suffered from not bringing enough returns into the game. The quality of the return has increased extremely – and the quality of its serve is growing continuously. The variation has become much better, the percentage of the first serves also, the tempo partly even higher. For me, the opening of the game was a weak point – and it’s gone now.

tennisnet: Now Thiem has flown to Asia for a tournament, the ATP Masters 1000 tournament in Shanghai. If there had been no obligation, would Dominic have stayed in Europe?

Bresnik: Dominic did not play any 1000cc tournaments this year. The only tournament I count is Madrid. In Rome he lost against a strong Fognini in the first match, at all other tournaments he was ill or injured. But the opportunity to compete with the best players is still the ups and downs. Dominic needs 15 to 20 games on a big stage against the best players in the world to make this last decisive step. He must take every opportunity.

Part 1: Günter Bresnik on the current Fprm by Dominic Thiem and the stars of the superstars

Part 2: Günter Bresnik on the new Davis Cup and his favourite player