US Open 2024: Thiem’s ​​Cursed Wrist, the Puncher Who Ended Up Broken | Tennis | Sports

New York bids farewell to Dominic Thiem, the man who lifted the title in a cursed year of the pandemic, and also to the tennis player whose doll, also cursed, left him halfway between what he was and what he could have been. A magnificent career, no doubt, but certainly inferior to what he could have had if he had not had to deal with a severe joint disease that was damaging tennis and the spirit of the Austrian, who is now saying goodbye to the tennis big stages, and at the end of the year he will do so from his sport. A real shame. With 17 titles under his belt, the aforementioned main Having achieved success at Flushing Meadows between them and three other relevant finals, Tim ends his career with retirement and also with relief: finally, the trials are over.

“I feel like now is the right time to stop,” he says after losing to local Ben Shelton (6-4, 6-2, 6-2). “I’ve had a very busy career and I don’t feel 31, I feel older in terms of tennis. I’ve never felt like I did before, especially with my right hand and a series of shots that I couldn’t get back,” he continues, referring to the progressive decline and inability to take off once his right wrist broke and he began to collapse (2021), which sidelined him for almost two years; then he returned, but the feeling did not improve. The uncertainty and fears persisted, and despite avoiding surgery, he never became the player who stunned with his deadly blow before the injury.

In terms of power and aggression, he has recently fallen out of favor with few. “I competed with the best players in history, and the pressure I put on myself to reach that level and maintain it contributed to the injury, there is no doubt about that. “I trained at a very high intensity for many years, and the doctors told me that I had broken my wrist because of all the training, all the punches I took and the hard work I had put in over the years,” he recently detailed in an interview with Austrian media Di Presse. Thiem hung out with all of them, and Thiem beat all three: six times against Rafael Nadal, five times against Roger Federer, and five times against Novak Djokovic. He became the world’s number three and the most realistic threat to the earthly king, the theoretical successor on the surface.

Methodical, physically strong and hardened under the strict military guidance of Günter Bresnik, who turned the young stripper into an elite athlete based on training sessions in which the tennis player lifted stones and 25-kilogram logs, Thiem has proven himself to be an experienced athlete who not only challenged Nadal in Chatrier, where the Spaniard beat him in the finals of 2018 and 2019, but also achieved outstanding results on the fast track. He gave up in the 2020 Australian match against Nole, but made up for it a few months later in New York, where he is now being applauded at his final stage. It is well deserved by the Austrian, respected in the locker room and who has received invitations and more invitations since his reappearance, given that he has disappeared from the top 100 of the tournament standings. rating- noted his exceptional professionalism. He tried to the end.

The Price of Overvoltage

In a rather conformist generation cowering before the power of giants, he rebelled. He worked piecework and developed. Violence in his strokes and a double register: pronounced topspin on sand and a flat and deep ball on hard. From the backhand to the school of one-handed strokes, he overtook Federer in the final of Indian Wells 2019 and could well have become a master, but Stefanos Tsitsipas (2019) and Daniil Medvedev (2020) stood in his way. Paradoxically, the triumph four years ago at Arthur Ashe exhausted him psychologically due to overexertion, and then came the unfortunate injury that finally clipped the wings of a player who retired early but satisfied. He did not spare an ounce of effort. But because of such a strong desire to improve, because of such intensity, he broke.

“I’ve known him since he was a kid because he’s also from ’93 and when we were playing in the juniors he was an average player, but then he made a big turn and started hitting the ball really hard. At first we thought he was a bit over the top because he hadn’t mastered everything, but then he reached an incredible level,” Roberto Carballes introduces. “He reached very high levels in the game, he worked a lot,” confirms Roberto Bautista. “From what he says, he was trained in the old school, very Javis and hit him really hard, and that’s something that, if left unchecked, can become dangerous,” adds the first, highlighting the efforts of the unbridled tennis player, whose house was once visited by the police because of his screams. : Nothing serious, Tim was just practicing.

You can follow EL PAÍS Deportes on Facebook And Xor sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.