By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Sunday May 30, 2021
After his five-set loss to Pablo Andujar on Day 1 at Roland Garros, Dominic Thiem had good news and bad news.
First the good news: he is not struggling with motivation.
“I was not struggling at all with my motivation, but the game was just not there today,” he said.
Now the bad news: Thiem can’t seem to summon the lethal tennis that made him a perennial Roland Garros contender and a US Open champion in 2020.
“All the shots are missing power,” he told reporters on Sunday. “They are not accurate enough. I'm moving not well enough, so everything in my game there are some percents missing, you know.
Thiem, who was sanguine about his form after reaching the semi-finals at Madrid earlier in May, has somehow lost his way again, and he isn’t quite sure why.
“Actually, I don't really know why, because since I stepped back on court it's already two months, and I was really practicing well, super intense as well,” he said. “Shots were there in practice and it got also better in Madrid and Rome. But Lyon and here, I mean, the shots and all how I moved and everything was just not the real me, I would say, or my version who is able to play for big titles. It's just not good enough at the moment. And, yeah, it's very tough situation.”
Thiem drops to 47-2 at the Slams when leading by two sets to love. The last time he suffered a loss from two sets up at a Slam was 2017 at the US Open, when Juan Martin Del Potro fought back to take him out in the round of 16.
“Losing after being two sets to zero up, it's very strange to me, and, I mean, I have to analyze it and think about it what's wrong at the moment,” he said. “And then of course try to hit back as soon as possible.”