Dominic Thiem won't be playing at the 2023 Winston-Salem Open after he withdrew from the event a couple of hours before he was set to play his first-round match.
It's been an interesting August for Dominic Thiem, who opened it by playing at home at the Kizbuhel Open. It's an ATP 250 event he had previously won, and spent many times preparing for bigger events there. The outing was one of his best of the year, as he made it to the final but lost to Sebastian Baez.
Thiem hasn't played since then, skipping over both Masters events in North America. It's unclear why Thiem skipped both events, though he needed to play the qualifiers in both. Perhaps that's what discouraged him.
In any case, Thiem was supposed to play in Winston-Salem, using that event as his sole US Open preparation. Being a former champion in New York likely means that he wants to put on a good show, but he'll enter the event without any hard court preparation at all.
In fact, the first round at the major will be his first hard-court match since March 24th, when he lost in the first round of the Miami Open. That's not ideal, especially for a player who hasn't been at his best so far this year. He only won 19 matches but lost 24 of them.
Playing only in Winston-Salem isn't anything new, as the Austrian did the same thing last year. He only played there ahead of the US Open, but it wasn't such a successful spell. He lost in the 3rd round to Jack Draper in Winston-Salem, while he lost to Pablo Carreno Busta in the 1st round of the US Open.
We'll see what happens with Thiem, but it looks bad. Luckily the withdrawal didn't come because of an injury but rather an illness. Still, those can slow you down as well.
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