Thiem Sails Past Edmund In Madrid To Set Up Tsitsipas Clash
ATP
Dominic Thiem made a winning start to his Madrid Open campaign by beating Kyle Edmund in two sets.
Edmund has missed a lot of time in recent years with injuries. The former ATP Top 20 ranked player played only 31 matches in 2020 before missing the entire 2021 season and playing only 15 matches in 2022.
Now, he’s back to kind of playing semi-regularly, but it’s a far cry from how challenging of an opponent he used to be on a tennis court, and it was one of the reasons why Thiem had no issues against him.
Their match was played on clay, a surface that certainly favors the Austrian much better, even though he has struggled to find his former self recently as well.
Thiem has historically been really good at the Madrid Open, making the final twice, losing to Rafael Nadal in 2017 and to Alexander Zverev in 2018. He also made the semi-final two times as well so he knows the courts in the Spanish capital well.
The match itself wasn’t a major problem for him, even though the opening set was close. Thiem faced two break points but saved both while using the only one Edmund allowed.
What allowed the Brit to keep it close was his serve. Madrid has high elevation, and the conditions are atypical for clay courts, so Edmund, with his aggressive style, could keep up with Thiem.
The second set wasn’t like that at all because this time around, Thiem was able to exploit the serve of Edmund. He dominated on the second serve of his opponent and did well on the first serve as well, even though Edmund also contributed with a bit too loose play.
In the end, Thiem played a really competitive match, finishing with 19 winners, which was seven more than Edmund had. He also served a bit better, which helped him wiggle out of the tricky situations he faced.
The Austrian player won the match 6-4, 6-1 to reach the second round, making good use of the wild card he received for the tournament. His next opponent will be Stefanos Tsitsipas.
