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By Chris Oddo | Sunday March 17, 2019


Not known for hardcourt prowess, and not off to a flying start in 2019, there were plenty of reasons to overlook Dominic Thiem ahead of this year’s BNP Paribas Open.

Not anymore.

The Austrian powered past Roger Federer in a closely contested final on Sunday at Indian Wells, taking the final two games with a flourish to claim a 3-6 6-3 7-5 victory and hoist the biggest title of his still blossoming career.

Thiem improves to an impressive 3-2 against Federer lifetime, and notches his first win over the Swiss on the hardcourts in three tries.

It had been a difficult start to 2019 for Thiem, who entered the year with high hopes after a long training block in Tenerife, Spain, but became ill at the Australian Open and needed a month to find his fitness. He didn’t feel right until he came to Indian Wells extra early to enjoy the relaxing surroundings and the peaceful vibes that the Coachella Valley offers.

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“The previous days here in Indian Wells helped me a lot to get back to my physical top level and also to play good tennis again, because I was here I think 11 days before the tournament,” Thiem told Tennis Now earlier in the week, after his round of 16 win over Ivo Karlovic. “So it was 11 days of good practice. Yeah, that's where I got my good feeling and my good tennis and also the good physical health back.”

After taking out hard-serving Karlovic and Milos Raonic in his two previous matches, Thiem produced his piece de resistance on Sunday by taking out Federer and thus denying the five-time champion another record-breaking achievement. As it stands, Federer and Djokovic will remain tied atop the Indian Wells honor roll, and Thiem will become the second consecutive first-time Masters 1000 titlist after Karen Khachanov won Paris last November.

Thiem had to work for it.

He was caught off balance by Federer’s attack in the first set of Sunday’s final. After managing to reach the final with only two breaks of serve against him, he was broken early. After he broke back for 3-4 he was broken a second time in the next game.

But in the middle set the 25-year-old began to take charge and assert himself physically against Federer.

Thiem was not broken again over the course of the two hour and two minute encounter, and he saved each of the three break points he faced in the final two sets.

The Swiss will lament chances missed in the tense third set, no doubt, especially a few loose points that he played during the eighth game of the final set when he missed on his only break point of the set, and a the strange decision to play back-to-back drop shots from 30-15 up in the ninth game which led to Thiem’s critical break for 6-5.

“I'm lucky, because I'm pretty fast,” Thiem said of the pair of remarkable gets. “That's a present from my parents, I guess. You cannot really practice that.”


Thiem would finish the game with yet another vicious forehand winner, one of 16 that he hit on the day off that wing.

After breaking for 6-5 he didn't struggle serving the match out. He converted his first match point after peppering Federer with a barrage of forehands that eventually elicited a netted forehand from the 37-year-old.

Afterwards Federer offered his opinion on just what it is that made Thiem tough to face on Sunday.

“You could definitely feel like every shot in Dominic's game has got some punch behind it. I think that's why also he did well here this week,” he said, adding: “I'm surprised he didn't do better in previous years, because I think it really lends itself to players who can put the pressure on time and time again, and who have a good kick serve. It does go up and it does fly and hard to control, especially once it gets up there.”

Thiem, always humble, was quick to credit his new coach Nicolas Massu for helping him get back into shape after he finally started to shake of the illness that had plagued him in the season’s first three months.


“Beside the matches, we had a great intensity in the practices before Indian Wells,” Thiem said of his new relationship with the Chilean. “He got me from physically not in good shape, tennis-wise not in good shape, he got me, well, to an Indian Wells champion. That's an amazing achievement also by him.”

With Thiem winning titles on hardcourt, it’s easy to look ahead and picture a clay-court season with the Austrian as a big factor. He has done a lot to erase any doubt about his form and he appears ready to hit his stride just in time to wreak havoc when the clay season begins in April.

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“It's amazing that I did my first big title here on a different surface than clay,” said Thiem, who became the seventh ATP player to win his first Masters title since Alexander Zverev captured the Rome title in 2017. “What makes me happy that I turned pretty bad start to the season to a very good one. I'm back in the top 8 in the race. I'm No.4 in the rankings, which is my best ranking. So I turned it from really bad into really good.”

As for Federer, he may have missed a great chance for a second title of the season, but he’s enthused about his form and looking forward to playing Miami next week.

“I feel really good, so why shouldn't I go into the tournament and to the event confident?” he said. 

 

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