Felix Auger-Aliassime played the longest match of his career, but he won it, so spending almost 5 hours on the court at the 2024 Australian Open ultimately proved worth it.
When the draw showed Auger-Aliassime that he'd play against Dominic Thiem, many expected a complicated match. We got more than we bargained for because it was a very complicated match.
Neither of these players was amazed with their performances leading up to the event. Thiem got reminded of his Roland Garros losses by Rafael Nadal in Brisbane while Auger-Aliassime waltzed around whether to play for Canada or not at the United Cup.
This match just had complications written all over it, and it delivered. The Canadian took the opening set 6-3 with a really strong display of confidence. He served well and attacked well from the baseline, completely outplaying Thiem.
Aggressive Auger-Aliassime is a great player, but sometimes doubt just creeps into his mind, and everything goes south. That didn't happen in the second set, as he won it 7-5, but it wasn't as clean of a performance.
Thiem upped his aggression quite a bit, and that put Auger-Aliassime on the backfoot a little bit. Still, the Austrian missed far too much to actually take the set. He would win the next set largely because he missed less.
He was still aggressive enough, but he didn't give out as many free points, and on top of that Auger-Aliassime lost a 5-2 lead in the tie-break, going from 5-2 to 5-7.
That's the doubt that he sometimes deals with, and it only grew after that. He lost his serve early in the fourth set and got stuck in a hole for a while. He got out of it by breaking at the right time to make it 5-5 but still lost the set 7-5.
Even so, he was looking confident again, which proved crucial in the fifth set. Thiem jumped out to a 40-15 lead on the serve of Auger-Aliassime early in the fifth set, but the Canadian saved it.
Then he broke Thiem, which was the crucial swing in the match. It wouldn't have happened if he doubted himself as he did in the third set and early goings of the fourth set.
From there, he kept his cool to win the match, with the final score being 6-3, 7-5, 6-7(5), 5-7, 6-3. The match lasted 4 hours and 59 minutes, which surpassed his longest previous match of 4 hours and 42 minutes.
Felix Auger-Aliassime vs Dominic Thiem Match Stats:
| Felix Auger-Aliassime | Dominic Thiem | |
| 16 | Aces | 15 |
| 10 | Double Faults | 8 |
| 58% | First Serve % | 67 |
| 77% (75/97) | Points Won After First Serve % | 70% (85/121) |
| 58% (40/69) | Points Won After Second Serve % | 47% (28/59) |
| 38% (5/13) | Break Point Conversion | 37% (3/8) |
| 54 | Winners | 57 |
| 53 | Unforced Errors | 66 |
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