Meles
Bionic Poster
LOL. You're saying Thiem will never win RG now?![]()
Thiem: 58.7% this year before Nadal, 55.47% after Nadal. 60.5% before playing Djokovic.
2017 was his best year. It is likely Thiem should not have faced Nadal that year if RG has a sane seeding system. Thiem was seeded #6, obviously stupid since he was in finals at Barcy and Madrid. No way he was the #6 clay player in the world. But they had Nadal at #4. This kind of nonsense is why RG is the King of Getting It Wrong on Clay.
Thiem was the second best player on clay in 2017. Without Nadal he had the right profile to win RG, so in that year he fit the mold for past RG winners. What I believe you are missing is that we have zero evidence that returning continues to go up in the late 20s and later. Aging players in general take up the slack by winning more service games, and that's pretty much a fact. I believe it is likely that Thiem's return game has already peaked, or at the most he has very little time left to equal returning or better what he did in 2017. That means he has to get tactically stronger, more aggressive, and learn how to shorten points.[/QUOTE]
Visually Thiem was hitting his speed peak at Indian Wells this year and Barcelona as well. This means he's a late bloomer on speed to me.
Played Karlovic, Raonic, Monfils, and ****** at Indian Wells and won 37.1% or return points and 54.6% of points for event which is solid for a Masters 1000 against servebots.
At Barcelona Thiem won 49.5% of return points. Again not sure what you're nattering on about with his return game. Roland Garros was quite low at 38.9% on clay, but this included Djokovic serving exceptionally well plus of course Nadal. Khach, Monfils, Bublik, and Cuevas all have big serve games on clay. Thiem also extremely rusty starting event due to lack of play (this is undeniable unless you think Bublik and Paul some kind of huge clay threat.)
There is nothing wrong with Thiem and in fact everything is very much right. Taking a set from Nadal in the final on Thiem's fourth day in a row of play shows that. Give it up.
