Dominic Thiem is the clear favourite in his opening match of the ATP World Tour 500 tournament at the Vienna Stadthalle. However, the Austrian has never played Ruben Bemelmans before.
By Jens Huiber from Vienna
This time Mr. Papa was not at the start like on Sunday evening, at least not as training partner on the NextGen-Court in the Vienna Stadthalle. Nevertheless Dominic Thiem had his hands full, on good days Grigor Dimitrov still reaches the level of Thiems father Wolfgang. These days are less sown in 2018 than a year ago, but the Bulgarian’s lecture is still beautiful to look at.
Thiem and Dimitrov ultimately suffered the same fate at the ATP World Tour 500 tournament in Vienna’s Stadthalle: In the first round it’s against a qualifier. Dimitrov measures himself against Mikhail Kukushkin, Thiem somewhat surprisingly against Ruben Bemelmans. Not that the Belgian didn’t really deserve the showdown on Tuesday (not before 5 p.m.) – but it was actually Richard Gasquet who wanted to challenge Thiem in round one. However, the Frenchman is not within reach of the Austrian tennis fans this season, and Gasquet had to cancel shortly before the start of the tournament, as he had already done in Kitzbühel.
127 ranks in the ATP world ranking are between Thiem and Bemelmans, the starting position could not be clearer. The underdog lost a set against Sebastian Ofner in the qualification, but then showed a flawless performance against Guido Pella, won 6:4 and 6:0. Thiem, however, will prefer to play Bemelmans, while Argentinian Pella was a task the number one in Vienna always had to work hard on until the beginning of the year.
But as is the case with Dominic Thiem’s ever-advancing development, the list of players against whom Lichtenwörther has never won is getting shorter and shorter. Prominent strike candidates this year included Kevin Anderson (who won against Thiem in Madrid and at the US Open), then Guido Pella and finally Martin Klizan in St. Petersburg.
Against Bemelmans the balance is balanced, the first game ever is on the horizon. In the event of success, an exciting task awaits Dominic Thiem in any case. Sam Querrey or Jo-Wilfried Tsonga are the candidates for a second round, the latter also one of those players Thiem has never won against. There would already be empirical values from Vienna, in 2013 the roof of the Stadthalle had almost lifted up, that’s how loud the audience was on a magical evening, which the Tsonga decided as the winner of a third set tiebreak.
Here the single tableau in Vienna