NEW YORK — His final shot landed long of the baseline, meaning it was time to walk to the net, but still Dominic Thiem had reason to do it with a smile.
From 2017 through 2020, Thiem was no worse than the fourth-best tennis player in the world. Often, he was a couple spots higher than that. He made four Grand Slam finals, had nearly a 50/50 combined record against Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer and finally won his first Grand Slam at the U.S. Open.
For awhile now, Thiem has accepted that he’d never be able to play like that again. The stress he put his body through for all those years he was trying to compete with the game’s legends had physically broken him. The surgically-repaired wrist he had used to generate immense power was no longer capable of producing shots that could damage the best players in the world. So a few months ago, the 30-year-old Austrian decided he would make one last go-round at the majors, play in Vienna one last time and then call it a career.
In some ways, the most important stop on this goodbye tour was Monday. Not because Thiem had a chance against the 13th-seeded American Ben Shelton – it was a predictably one-sided 6-4, 6-2, 6-2 match – but because it gave Thiem the chance to experience something he never got the last time he played inside Arthur Ashe Stadium.
Applause, and maybe even more than that, appreciation.
“It’s actually a really important moment for me because I’ve had my greatest success of my career here on this court,” Thiem told the crowd after a short ceremony to acknowledge his retirement. “Unfortunately, I had this success without any of you. So that was of course at one point a really amazing moment but also pretty sad.”
Every tennis player grows up dreaming about what it would feel like to win a Grand Slam. None of them envisioned doing it in an empty stadium with silence all around them after championship point.
But those were the circumstances under which Thiem won his major in 2020 after a nervy five-set battle against Alexander Zverev.
Just four years later, that whole period of our lives seems a little surreal and thankfully long in the past. The compromises we had to make to put on tournaments like the U.S. Open were necessary at the time, but far from ideal. Even in the moment, we all understood Thiem deserved a better Grand Slam celebration than the one he got that night.
Still, Thiem had given tennis every reason to believe there was more in store. He was just entering his prime, as fit as anyone in the sport and poised to collect significant hardware as Nadal and Djokovic got older.
Instead, Thiem never won another professional title. His wrist flared up early in 2021, and when he came back nine months later, the game that he had ridden to the top of the sport wasn’t there anymore. There were a few flashes of good play, but nothing was sustainable. The thing that had made him great – elite baseline power off both his forehand and backhand – had been diminished just enough that the strokes were ordinary.
“The feeling on the forehand never came back like it was before,” Thiem said Monday. “And of course I was struggling mentally a lot because it was difficult to accept. But I’m really happy with the career I had before and never expected it was going to be that successful, so I don’t have any regrets and I’m good with that.”
It’s good that Thiem is leaving the game fulfilled and gratified about what he achieved rather than bitter over what he missed out on, but it’s still a bit sad to think that he might not get the recognition historically for just how good of a player he was. Anyone calling him a one-Slam wonder is completely missing the point.
In an era when nobody was getting past the Big 3 on a regular basis, Thiem beat Djokovic five out of 12 times including at the 2017 and 2019 French Open. He had six wins in 16 meetings against Nadal, including a remarkable 7-6, 7-6, 4-6, 7-6 victory in the 2020 Australian Open quarterfinals. And he went 5-2 against Federer, including the Indian Wells final in 2019.
“I had legendary matches against the best players in our era, maybe the best players in history,” he said. “Now it’s amazing memories. But back then it was really important to me to know that when I step on court against Novak or against the other best players I had the ability to win.”
The last couple years, Thiem knew he no longer had that ability. When he finally accepted it, it freed him to look ahead at the normal life he was going to enjoy rather than the tennis career in his rearview mirror.
But he did want one more chance on Ashe, to hear the admiration and appreciation that he never got four years ago on the best day of his career. It was a fitting send-off, indeed.
“I tried to really soak up every moment in this stadium,” he said. “Of course I’m not having the level anymore that’s required to really go head-to-head with players like Ben so I tried to enjoy as much as possible. I’m happy.”
Follow columnist Dan Wolken on social media @DanWolken
The USA TODAY app gets you to the heart of the news — fast. Download for award-winning coverage, crosswords, audio storytelling, the eNewspaper and more.