Dominic Thiem played some solid tennis at the 2023 Estoril Open but it was not enough to get past the quarterfinal stages.
In the first two rounds of the tournament, the Austrian found his firing power again and recorded two impressive victories. However, in the quarterfinals, Thiem took on Quentin Halys from France, ranked 80th on the ATP Tour.
Despite his ranking suggesting otherwise, the Frenchman has been in a great form recently, beating the likes of Alex de Minaur and Roberto Bautista Agut over the past few weeks. In Estoril, he wanted to record yet another impressive win, this time over the former world no. 3.
And Halys started much better than Thiem in the firs set. Except for a couple of occasions, players fought for almost every game in the first set and both had multiple opportunities to go into the lead.
Specifically, both players had two break points, but the conversion rate mattered this time. While Halys used both of his chances, his opponent couldn't do the same thing, especially because of the Frenchman's serving. Thanks to that, after only 35 minutes, Halys won the first set 6-1.
But Thiem was determined to pull out yet another comeback in Estoril. The Austrian improved his level in the second set, but a few unforced errors in the fifth game proved to be costly for him.
As during the whole match, Halys was 100% when having a break point and he used his chance to break Thiem also in the fifth game of the second set and once again, thanks to his almost perfect serving, he won the match 6-1, 6-4. He will await the winner of the match between the first-seeded Casper Ruud and defending champion Sebastian Baez in the semifinals.
On the other hand, the 2020 US Open champion will now want to focus on the upcoming event. Initially, he was not supposed to compete at the 2023 Monte-Carlo Masters, but just today, he received a wild card and will play at the first ATP 1000 clay-court tournament of the season.
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