Melbourne
Third seed Dominic Thiem slumped out of the Australian Open in lacklustre fashion on Sunday, complaining of undisclosed physical issues after being thrashed 6-4 6-4 6-0 in the fourth round by Grigor Dimitrov.
The U.S. Open champion, who came back from two sets down to beat Nick Kyrgios in a third round battle on Friday night, looked out of sorts from the beginning of the contest and made an uncharacteristic 41 unforced errors.
“A combination of some little physical issues, plus a real bad day, plus the fact that he’s a great player … a result like that can happen,” Thiem said.
“I’m not a machine, sometimes I would like to be, but there are really, really bad days. As soon as you’re not 100% at this level, then results like this come up, and that’s exactly what happened today.”
While Thiem’s five-set match against Kyrgios had been played in a bear pit, Sunday’s match was witnessed by only a handful of officials and coaches on Rod Laver Arena as Melbourne’s coronavirus lockdown kept the fans away.
“It was a special match two nights ago, and I woke up maybe a little bit different than on a normal match, especially with all the energy from the crowd,” Thiem added.—AFP
