By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Wednesday September 9, 2020
Dominic Thiem continued his push for a maiden Grand Slam title at the US Open by powering past Australia’s Alex de Minaur 6-1 6-2 6-4 on Wednesday night to book a semifinal clash with last year’s runner-up Daniil Medvedev.
The 27-year-old Austrian cracked 44 winners to just 17 for 21-year-old De Minaur and comfortably came away with the victory despite a strong push in the third set by the Aussie.
After the match Thiem talked about the struggle of playing without fans and the difficulties he has had finding the energy. He said the quality of the match went a bit flat, and added that it's difficult not having the crowd to motivate him.
"There are some situations in every match basically where it would be nice to have the crowd just to keep the energy up, just to celebrate great points, that it doesn't feel that bad if you going through a tough period in that certain match," he said. "That all kind of is gone when there are no fans in the stadium. That was not easy to get used to. But also today I would say in the third set, the whole match was a little bit flat from both of us. He was the first one who got his energy back and broke me. Again through this we both fired up again and it got a really great match again."
De Minaur broke Thiem after dropping serve in his first service game of the match but the Austrian reeled off the final four games of the opening set.
It was just too tough for De Minaur to contend with Thiem's bristling baseline game.
"He's got the strength to just still hit through the court," De Minaur told reporters after the match. "Obviously with my body, I probably don't have the power to just hit through the court as well."
The players were even at 2-2 in the second set but Thiem rolled through the final four games to take a two sets to love lead.
In the third set De Minaur fought back from a break down and had a small window to move ahead with Thiem serving at 3-4 15-30, but a Thiem shot clipped off the tape and dropped on De Minaur’s side of the net. Thiem won the game after a few deuces and took the next two games to wrap up his victory in two hours and four minutes.
“He played a very solid match,” De Minaur said. “The one kind of chance I had, I had a 15-30, then I had a let cord, which I'm not saying the match would have changed in any way, shape or form, but who knows. I just broke him, held from Love-40 down. If maybe I broke him 5-3 serving for the set, who knows. He played well. I didn't get chances. The one little chance I got, I just got unlucky.
Thiem will face Medevedev for the fourth time on Friday. He won the first two but was defeated by the Russian last year at the Rogers Cup. He said he looks forward to the challenge of a physical affair.
"I would say that he comes very close to the big three players in terms that he can play his level, his top level, for doesn't matter how long, I mean, four, five, six hours," Thiem said. "That's going to be really, really difficult. But I'm looking forward to that one. I think it's going to be a big stage, even if it's without fans. It's going to be a great semifinals."