I see alot of shotmaking ability in thiem ,I think he has all the weapons he needs(his serve is way too inconsistent though),his problem is positioning on court ,and horible BP conversion alongside tactics.Those should be things that can be improved.And I mean come on, he looked awesome last year in the frist half in many matches .
Thiem does not have Federer's talent, so unless he somehow manages to completely remove the mental midgetry in big matches a la Wawrinka, he will continue to be a mug and a choker.
As for last year...
1. At no point did Thiem dominate the field playing great tennis. He was clutch and won a lot of close matches in the smaller tournaments (add the RG QF vs Goffin as well, one point away from going 0-2 down), plus his deciding set record was something like 20-1 up to Wimbledon. So, Thiem had belief and was ready to go the distance, which allowed him to win a lot despite not playing dominantly. He was in great physical and mental form. Once that evaporated, his technical deficiencies were once again exposed on a regular basis. Thiem cannot expect to summon that form as well, he will wear himself down again, so he must improve his technical game to win big. Until then, he will not be able to do so, as long as he continues to struggle regularly against lesser players.
2. For all that, as far as the big tournaments go, Thiem has shown very little for the expectations that have been piled on him by some.
In the Masters tournaments, he usually got soft draws in the early rounds, with the exception of Rome.
Fact:
Thiem's 2016 Masters record is 10-8;
if you remove Rome, it's 7-7;
5 of Thiem's 7 non-Rome victories are over qualifiers;
1 other is over then-#76 Groth who was having a terrible season and slipped below top 200 at some point;
1 other win is over then-#21 Sock.
So, outside of Rome, Thiem only had 1 Masters win over an ok player, while his other 6 wins came against weak players. As soon as he met a top player, a loss in straights was incoming (Tsonga, Djokovic - even though he was off and bad on serve, Nadal, Nishikori, Raonic), with Tsonga, Nishikori and especially Raonic recording beatings where Thiem never looked like winning, while Djokovic and Nadal enjoyed massive BP conversion failures from Thiem (1/15 and 2/16, I think). Thiem's other losses include choking to comebacking del Potro on clay - and del Potro didn't play great, but, once again, 0/7 on BPs and there you go; playing lackadaisical and getting destroyed by Sock in Paris; retiring against Anderson.
In the Slam tournaments, it is enough to point out that the second-highest ranked player Thiem beat in 2016 was #36 Leonardo Mayer (AO R1). The highest was Goffin in RG QF - Thiem had to fight hard not to go two sets to love down, and then he wore Goffin down in the end. Not that impressive.
Thiem has talent, but he has not learned to apply it properly yet. I don't see the reason to give him high praise until he at least beats an in-form top 10 player in a big tournament. So far he has 3 top 10 victories in big tournies (Wawrinka, Federer, Monfils), but the losers did not play top tennis in those matches.
