Love affair with clay courts
After observing Nadal thrive year after year on the red mud of the Roland Garros stadium, it's easy to see that an affinity towards any kind of surface is a blessing for players in the tennis circuit. As soon as that season starts, they are infused with a different kind of confidence, their sense of purpose intensifies, and they bask in a kind of Zen-like focus that they manage to generate on their favourite surface.
The case is the same with Thiem and clay. His love affair with the surface might not be as pink as Nadal’s is, but it definitely has a tinge of rosiness to it.
Of the eight titles that Thiem has won in his still-nascent career, six have been on clay. If that doesn’t display dominance on the surface, what does? His comfort level is at its highest when he feels the mud sticking to his sprinting shoes. When he looks at the ball bouncing right up to his racket, he pounces at it at the drop of a hat.
In fact, Thiem reached the quarterfinal of the first ever ATP tournament that he played, which was the Bet-at-home cup at Kitzbühel. Not surprisingly, that too was on a clay court.
With the Austrian being a mighty member of the ‘NextGen’ and touted to be a future Grand Slam champion, the Roland Garros trophy in his cabinet seems like an inevitability rather than a mere possibility.
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