Dominic Thiem does not yet have a ranking target for 2023 The former third in the world rankings and currently 102nd has not yet set a ranking target for next year. “I have deliberately not set myself a ranking target because I want to wait and see how the first tournaments go,” Thiem said in an interview on ServusTV on Monday. After the strenuous weeks leading up to the end of the season in the Wiener Stadthalle, he took it easy. “I didn’t do anything for ten days, that felt good and the batteries are recharged.” It wasn’t warm on Sylt, but it was very nice, he reported on his short vacation.
Thiem’s fitness coach Jeremy Green is coming to Vienna on Tuesday. “We will only do fitness for a week, not pick up the tennis racket yet, and then combine it,” said Thiem. Thiem wants to be at his “absolute top level” by the start of the season in Australia. Before that, the football fan also wants to watch the World Cup (“there will be a bit of time”), he kept his fingers crossed for England and Germany.
In retrospect, Thiem gave the mixed comeback year a grade of 2. “It was incredibly instructive, of course at the beginning with less good experiences, but the end was more than forgiving. The difficult phase at the beginning showed me an incredible number of things,” recalls Thiem, who repeated that in retrospect he should have postponed his comeback by a few weeks. Although the doubts grew with seven defeats in the first round, he never thought of retiring. “Absolutely not, the thought kept fading away. The worse I played, the more I wanted to prove to myself that I could come back.” He described the weak performance at the French Open as the low point, after which the turning point came with a long training block in Traiskirchen. In the end there were three semi-finals (Gstaad, Gijon, Antwerp) and two quarter-finals (Baastad, Kitzbühel). “In the last part of the season everything started to fall into place.” He described the victory over the Polish top man Hubert Hurkacz as a highlight.
The aspired top 100 hasn’t quite worked out, but the place in the main draw of the Australian Open in January should work out. His coach Nicolas Massu did a lot of calculations. Ending the season was the right decision. “The year is much more than the Australian Open, next year is very important, so preparation is essential.”
It will be some time before he returns to the form from when he won the US Open in 2020, said Thiem. “I want to be a new and better version of myself.” In preparation, he wants to “close the small gap to the top players”.
He still believes that the remaining superstars of the “big three”, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, are capable of great titles. “I think there’s definitely more to come in 2023. Nadal can always be trusted, Djokovic is in great shape and full of juice, I think there’s still a lot to come from both of them.” He followed Roger Federer’s emotional farewell from Tel Aviv. “Of course I was touched, just by the atmosphere there. He is an absolute icon, one of the greatest athletes of all time to have left the stage.” The US Open title of the new number one, Carlos Alcaraz, did not surprise Thiem. And he immediately expressed a wish: “I hope that I can play my first game against him in 2023.”
Source: Nachrichten
