‘After winning the 2020 US Open, I was looking for a “new dream” to achieve in life,’ reflects Dominic Thiem
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Dominic Thiem
Dominic Thiem has been experiencing a rough time on the tour this year. Despite winning the US Open in 2020, the Austrian couldn’t carry forward the momentum to win more titles.
After a poor run on the hard courts and clay, Thiem picked up a wrist injury while playing a grass court tournament in Mallorca. Unfortunately, the extent of the injury forced him to spend time away from the circuit.
Despite the surgery, the 27-year-old is still unsure about when and where he will return to the tour in 2022. Meanwhile, Thiem had also spoken to the media on how he struggled with motivation and energy.
Recently, in an appearance with the Tennis United Series, the 2020 US Open champion stated how the post the victory in New York, he was suffering mentally and looked for a “new dream” to march ahead in life.
“It was more like, now what? Because there was not so much new pressure or something like that going on,” Thiem explained. But before the US Open, when I had tough periods or lost tough matches I’ve always told myself ‘it’s really tough now, and it’s not so much fun right now, but there’s still this big dream and this big goal in the back of my head.”
“And obviously after I did that in the next tough period of time, after the Australian Open, this thing of, well, there’s still something I really want to achieve, it was gone. So it was a new situation. I was trying to find a new dream, but talking about it with all kind of people, family, friends and other athletes, of course that helped even more,” he added.
Online Abuse Is Insane
The two-time French Open finalist also reflected on how tennis players often fall prey to social media abuse and threats. While the issue is more prevalent on the WTA tour, couple of leading men’s players too have been targeted.
“We, everybody is suffering from that (online abuse), I guess. And I can only speak about us, I mean, the messages we get after mostly lost matches. It’s insane,” Thiem said.
In 2021, Thiem has played 19 matches across surface and has only won nine out of those.
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