Bastad, Thiem stops in the quarters with Baez

He manages to turn the page but only partially Dominic Thiem, engaged in a recovery path to say the least uphill towards the levels that most compete him. After two years to forget between injuries, depression and pauses for reflection (then also followed by the mockery of the positivity on returning to the Challengers), in Bastad, Sweden, he returned to play the quarter-finals of an ATP tournament, before being stopped on the most beautiful by Sebastian Baez. The Austrian in fact gave way to the Argentine in three sets, leaving the scene with the score of 2-6 7-6 (5) 4-6, at the end of two hours and 49 minutes of battle. For Baez, who holds a record of 20-9 on clay since the beginning of the season, this is the third semi-final of 2022 after those reached in February at the Chile Open and in May at Estoril. In the next round, for a place in the final, he will meet the winner of the match between the Serbian Laslo Djere and the second favorite of the event Andrey Rublev.

Progress

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Despite today’s result, this week’s proved to be the turning point tournament for Thiem who gave important signs of recovery after the troubled past. In fact, collapsed to # 339 in the ranking after that much-coveted Slam title at the US Open in 2020 – which later turned out to be bewitched – during the week in Bastad the 28-year-old from Wiener Neustadt found the right rhythm against high-ranking players . At the debut he won in three sets on Emil Ruusuvuori (3-6 6-1 7-6) and then eliminated Roberto Bautista Agut (7-6 3-6 6-4), winning his first victory against a Top 20 from Nitto ATP Finals 2020. For “Domi” also a leap in the standings of 67 positions in the live ranking (n. 272) which starting from Monday will bring him back to the top 300 players in the world. The goal now is to further raise the level in view of the next matches in Gstaad and Kitzbuhel, tournaments in which Thiem will take part thanks to the protected ranking, as in the past week.