Dominic Thiem is attempting to regain his top form and he made a decision to compete in a couple of ATP Challenger events to do that.
The 2020 US Open champion has elected to skip the 2023 Italian Open in Rome, and he has rather decided to focus on smaller ATP Challenger tournaments. First, he competed in Mauthausen in Austria, losing to Hamad Medjedovic in the semifinals.
After that, Thiem moved closer to where he aims to peak during the clay-court season. He competed at the ATP Challenger event in Bordeaux and after beating Benoit Paire in the first round, he took on another home player, the eighth-seeded Corentin Moutet.
The Austrian started well, getting an early break and even led 4-2 and 40-0 to increase his advantage to two breaks. But he didn't add another break and even lost the one that he had as the first set had to be decided in a tie-break.
In the tie-break, Moutet proved to be the better player, winning it 7-5 and entering the second set with a clear advantage. Only recently, Thiem spoke about how he lost his inner drive after the US Open triumph and it seemed that he missed it also during the second set of the match against Moutet.
The Frenchman didn't have to face any break points in the second set. On the other hand, he had five break points and used three to comfortably win the match 7-6(5), 6-1 and set up a quarterfinal meeting with the first-seeded Jan Lennard Struff.
For Thiem, a period of preparations for the upcoming Roland Garros begins. The Austrian played the final in Paris twice, and he will want to add another one in 2023, even though also reaching just the latter stages would be a success for him at this moment.
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