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World No. 3 Dominic Thiem had played a lot of exhibition matches during the pandemic-enforced lockdown, and was looking like the most match-fit player on tour. But all of that came to nothing as he crashed out of the Western & Southern Open at the very first hurdle, losing 6-2, 6-1 to Filip Krajinovic.
The Austrian came out extremely flat in his opener, despite being pitted against the very player he had beaten to win the Belgrade leg of the Adria Tour. While top seed Novak Djokovic won his second round match in straight sets, the second seed Thiem put up an utterly shambolic display and won a grand total of two points on Krajinovic's serve.
Some believe that Dominic Thiem's struggles to replicate his lockdown form - which saw him beating the likes of Stefanos Tsitsipas and Matteo Berrettini - were down to the speed of the surface at Flushing Meadows. The Austrian was not able to settle into any rhythm on the quicker-than-normal court, and was blown away by a solid performance from his Serbian opponent.
After the match Thiem reflected on the possible reasons for his disastrous result, and how he will try to move past it.
I didn't get any rhythm: Dominic Thiem
Dominic Thiem's loss was one of several upsets on the day at the Western & Southern Open. The Austrian joined Sascha Zverev, Grigor Dimitrov, Denis Shapovalov and Diego Schwartzman in the list of seeded players to be bundled out of the Masters 1000 tournament at the second round stage.
Speaking about his blowout against Krajinovic, Dominic Thiem said that he was clueless about what happened:
"It was just a horrible game by myself. Didn't play well at all. Didn't get any rhythm. I had [a lot of] trouble returning. It's tough to understand right now, but I will think about it and hopefully I'll find better answers in the next days."
Thiem's loss was particularly surprising given his returning woes. Filip Krajinovic is not known for having a big serve, and yet he was utterly dominant on that shot throughout the match. The World No. 3 couldn't time his strokes from the beginning, and eventually that led to his entire game unraveling.
"I had troubles to just find the timing and to find the right position in the return, and then also from the beginning I had troubles with my service games," Thiem said. "And then of course I lost confidence in the returns because I was struggling to get my own service game through. And then of course the pressure grows in the return games. All this together sums up in these horrible stats."
Dominic Thiem's conqueror Filip Krajinovic will now face Marton Fucsovics for a place in the quarterfinals of Cincinnati Masters.
Sascha Zverev on Dominic Thiem's loss: "It's the first match back, I think there are going to be weird results"
Dominic Thiem's friend Sascha Zverev, who lost to Andy Murray in a close match himself, spoke about the unpredictability of the results after so much time away from competitive tennis.
"After six months off, it is not easy to come back," Zverev said. "I just watched Dominic Thiem lose to Krajinovic 6-2, 6-1. It's the first match back, and I think there are going to be some weird results."
With his loss in his Cincinnati opener, Dominic Thiem has fallen to a 3-5 W-L record at the North American hardcourt tournament. The Austrian's inconsistency on the surface has come back to bite him, just when everyone had started thinking it was a thing of the past.
Thiem's Indian Wells triumph in 2019 and Australian Open runner-up finish earlier this year had suggested he was ready to become a consistent hardcourt threat. But this latest setback makes it clear that he still has improvements to make if he wants to challenge Novak Djokovic at the US Open next week.
