Dominic Thiem ended ‘big three’ stranglehold at the expense of his own career

How many lesser players managed to nip in and snatch major titles during the reign of the Big Three? It’s a vanishingly small group. And with Dominic Thiem’s first-round defeat on Monday, another member of this plucky band has left the grand slam stage.

Let’s be a little more precise about our statistics. If we define the outer limits of the Big Three era as Rafael Nadal’s emergence and Roger Federer’s last competitive match, only five interlopers collected grand slams during that 16-year period. Or, in other words, just under half as many people as have walked on the moon.

The final name in the sequence belonged to Thiem, the Austrian who won the 2020 US Open, only to suffer a debilitating wrist injury nine months later.

Asked on Monday what he would miss most about the game, Thiem replied “The feeling after winning a great match. It’s not really comparable to anything else. You don’t really get this feeling, in my case, in life outside of tennis, because it’s a real high. It’s like being on drugs a little bit, I guess.”

A whole-hearted, loud-grunting competitor, Thiem played his final grand slam match on Monday at the relatively young age of 30, having worn out his body in the pursuit of three sporting immortals.

“That contributed to the injury, definitely,” said Thiem in a recent interview with The Athletic. “I was competing with the three greatest of all time. That was intense.”

Thiem’s farewell was a one-sided affair against Ben Shelton, the 21-year-old American who serves at the speed of light. It felt fitting that Thiem’s final shot was a forehand that kept flying when he needed it to dip, because that wrist injury robbed him of his fizzing topspin.

US Open courts are usually slow to fill, and with Thiem being scheduled first on Monday afternoon, only around half the 24,000 seats on Arthur Ashe Stadium were occupied. Still, that’s roughly 12,000 more people than had been present when he beat Alexander Zverev in the final of 2020’s Covid-ridden US Open.

One of the less remembered grand slam showpieces, this was a hot mess of a match, in which both men seemed overwhelmed by the scale of the prize on offer. Whoever won would interrupt a sequence of 14 successive majors – three-and-a-half years worth – that had been squirrelled away by the Big Three cartel, while also becoming the first new grand slam champion since 2014.

In the event, it was Thiem who had the cojones to go after a couple of big forehands in the ten-point deciding-set tie-break, despite being hobbled by cramp at the time. As Telegraph Sport reported at the time, “The moral of the story is that a broken body will eventually overcome a doubting mind.”

Thiem’s many admirers hoped that his US Open breakthrough would be the first of many major titles – especially as Nadal was beginning to fade physically, and clay was his strongest surface.

Instead, it proved to be the beginning of the end. First Thiem’s triumph begat a prolonged hangover in which he lacked his usual motivation to red-line every training session.

And then, more tellingly, he ripped his wrist tendon while playing Adrian Mannarino in Mallorca. He opted against surgery, trying to build up his strength again gradually. But he never regained full confidence in the joint. Once his existing rankings points had fallen away, he would never find his way back into the world’s top 70.

The depleted late-career Thiem gave no hint of what a high-octane performer he had been at his peak. While his relentless forehand was probably his best shot, his most photogenic was a scorching single-handed backhand that evoked comparisons with Stan Wawrinka.

His three-set win over Novak Djokovic at the 2020 ATP Finals was a backhand masterclass. Thiem was regularly walloping the shot so hard that the ball was still rising when it hit the backboard, and yet he still kept finding the lines.

Monday’s 6-4, 6-2, 6-2 defeat was not quite Thiem’s final professional appearance, as he plans to play his home ATP event in Vienna in October. But it still felt like a last bow, especially when United States Tennis Association chairman Brian Hainline walked out onto the court to present him with a framed photo at the conclusion of the match.

A passionate Chelsea fan and an equally committed proponent of sustainable living, Thiem said that his post-playing life will be split between his coaching academy in Traiskirchen – one of Austria’s smallest cities – and a solar energy project.

He also acknowledged that his decision to leave the tour had improved his state of mind. “I’m happy,” said Thiem, an unassuming character who was always one of the most popular figures in the locker-room. “I was struggling enough the last years, especially since I was not able to come back to my [previous] level, but once I took the decision this year in March, from this moment on, I was happy about it.

“When the injury happened, the feeling, especially on the forehand, never came back like it was before. Of course, due to that, I was struggling also mentally a lot, because it was very difficult to accept.

“The basic reason why I’m here, now, retiring pretty young is still the bad luck with the wrist injury. But again, I’m really happy with the career I had before. I never expected that it’s gonna be that successful, so I don’t have really any regrets, and I’m good with that.”