The start of the first clay court tournament of the year is for Dominic Thiem succeeded with minor problems. The fourth in the world rankings hit the ATP 500 tournament in the night Rio de Janeiro the local hero Meligeni 6: 2, 4: 6, 6: 1. Arrive after a balanced start Thiem in the first set two breaks to 4: 2 and 6: 2, and he saw against the 341st of the Tennis world rankings like the sure winner.
Knee pain in the 2nd sentence
But suddenly there was excitement in the coaching box of the Lower Austrian at the beginning of the second sentence. Thiem suffered an injury to the left knee and had to be bandaged by the tournament doctor. Gripped several times Thiem his knee was distorted with pain, but did not appear to be impaired on his walking routes. Still undermined Thiem In the second sentence, an unusually large number of uncommon errors, the service quota dropped to 40 percent, and Thiem dreri does not use breakballs. And Meligeni, who was suddenly cheered on by the Brazilian audience, took Thiem with his only breakball the service from 4: 3 and served from 6: 4.
Clear decision sentence
In the decisive third set pulled Thiem within a quarter of an hour to 5: 0 and after a total of 2:04 hours scored his third match ball 6: 2, 4: 6, 6: 1.
Another two wins to overtake Federer
Thiem is now in the round of 16 of the tournament Rio and meets the Spaniard there Jaume Munar, number 99 in the world. In the event of another victory, the winner would be the game of the two qualifiers in the quarter-finals Joao Domingues (Portugal/No. 162) and Gianluca lean (Italy/No. 128). Skinny has the Norwegian in the first round Casper Ruud switched off the tournament from last week Buenos Aires won.
Should Thiem with these two victories reaching the semi-finals, he would get an additional 135 world ranking points – and these would be enough to push the Swiss Rogerer Federer out of third place in the world rankings. It would be a record placement for Thiem – and currently only his left knee seems to stand in the way.
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