“I have had so many wonderful farewells in the last few weeks and months. It was all about me, it was beautiful. I would like to use today to thank you (the audience, note),” said Thiem in a speech in the hall immediately after the match. A huge thank you for your support over the years. The whole trip was an absolute dream. This all meant a lot to me. Also a thank you to all Austrians and everyone who supported me. I also have another request. Tennis in Austria has experienced a huge upswing, please keep it going. So that this beautiful sport remains so present.”
“I tried to play well and squeezed out a few percent in the first set. Of course I wanted to offer the audience another good match. I managed to do that really well in the first sentence.” He wasn’t relaxed at all, but “very nervous”. “I was good in the tunnel. I haven’t always been able to do that in recent years. I got the most out of the first set.”
Thiem loses last match after fight
Dominic Thiem‘s career is over: The 31-year-old from Lower Austria lost his first round match in the Wiener Stadthalle against the Italian Luciano Darderi. Thiem said goodbye with a good performance, missed a set point in the tiebreak and ultimately lost 6:7 (6/8) 2:6.
“Very cool feeling” even without winning a set
He was surprisingly able to keep the match open in the first set. He was very focused right from the start. “I really wanted to win the first set and I almost succeeded. Unfortunately not, but having the feeling of being in the zone again was very cool,” said the Lichtenwörther native.
Anyone expecting sentimental tears was disappointed. In contrast to the farewells of Roger Federer and other stars, Thiem remained calm and put his racket in a showcase as an exhibit for the current exhibition in the town hall. “I was never that emotional, and that’s how it was today.”
Hard-fought first set
From the start, Thiem kept up well with Darderi, who is 276 places ahead of him in the world rankings. In the fifth game, the 31-year-old won break points and used the fifth of them to take a 3-2 lead. After a smooth service game to make it 4:2, Thiem seemed to be on the way to winning the set, but had to accept the rebreak to make it 4:4.
The decision was made in the tiebreak, in which the local hero took the lead with a minibreak and even had a set point at 6/5. With three points in a row, Darderi secured the first round after around an hour.
In the second set, Thiem received a break right at the start, after another lost service game to make it 1:4, the crowd favorite’s resistance was broken, and it was no longer possible to win the game more than 2:5. After 1:31 hours of play, Darderi ended Thiem’s career with the first match point and moved into the round of 16.
US Open title as a highlight of his career
The 563rd match on the ATP tour was the last of Thiem’s great career, who played his first tour-level game on August 1, 2011 in Kitzbühel. The Spaniard Daniel Gimeno-Traver was still too strong for the then 17-year-old. On Tuesday it was Darderi who inflicted Thiem’s 215th defeat – out of 348 victories.
He celebrated seven of them on the way to his only major victory at the US Open 2020 in New York. Thiem also has three other Grand Slam finals (French Open 2018 and 2019, Australian Open 2020) and 16 other ATP titles to his name, including the Masters 1000 triumph in Indian Wells in 2019. And he achieved that in 2019 and 2020 Final at the ATP Finals, the season showdown of the eight best players of the year.
Thiem had his best ATP ranking as of March 2, 2020 with third place, which he was able to maintain for around eleven months. From June 2016 to November 2021 he was consistently in the top ten.
ATP 500 tournament in Vienna
(2,626,045 euros, hard court, hall)
