A difficult task for Dominic Thiem at the ATP World Tour 500 tournament in Vienna. The tournament favorite will face Sam Querrey in round two.
Dominic Thiem will be in on Tuesday with a 7:5, 7:6 (7/5) against the Belgian qualifier Ruben Bemelmansins eighth finals of the Erste Bank Open 500, endowed with 2,788,570 Euro. Until the score of 6:5 for Thiem, both players had hardly any problems to get their serve through. In the twelfth game Bemelmans suddenly weakened his service. The Belgian was able to fend off four set points from Thiems, but with the fifth set the local hero, who was cheered on by 7,500 spectators in the Vienna Stadthallefrenet, managed to take the redeeming set lead. In the second run neither Thiem nor Bemelmans had a break chance, so the decision had to be made in the tiebreak.
With a 5:4 lead and his own serve, Bemelmans seemed to have all the trumps in his hand, but Thiem promptly took both points from his opponent’s service and after 1:45 hours converted the first match point to victory. “It was an extremely hard piece of work. The first match is always hard. As usual, I was a bit nervous here in Vienna. But it was an extremely horny mood. Except for one game in the first set, I didn’t have any problems with my serve, unfortunately he didn’t have any problems with his either. That means I didn’t have enough break chances, so I have to improve my return for the next match. I had problems getting into the rallies, I didn’t manage that. My match plan didn’t work out that way,” Thiem’s analysis was quite self-critical.
Lichtenwörther’s opponent in the round of sixteen is the US American Sam Querrey (ATP rank 56), who took the Frenchman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Vienna 2011 winner and finalist in the last two years, out of the tournament in 1:23 hours with 6:3, 3:6, 6:3. “Querrey serves very well and risks a lot in his return games. I will use a strong serve for training until the match on Thursday to be well prepared,” said Thiem, who leads 2-1 in the direct duels. The Austrian won 2016 on hard court in Acapulco and 2017 on sand in Rome. In 2017 Querrey also had the better end in Acapulco.