Dominic Thiem concluded his final Roland Garros in quite an unfortunate way, as he was beaten by Otto Virtanen in the second round of the qualifying.
There was a lot of discourse in tennis circles recently after it became known that Thiem didn't get a wild card in Roland Garros' main draw. The Austrian hasn't been playing that well this year and couldn't get his ranking to where it needed to be to avoid having to play the qualifiers, so a wild card was his last hope.
He didn't get it and surprisingly admitted that he didn't deserve it after winning the first qualifying match in Paris. It was a complicated match, but he was able to battle and ultimately win.
All of his recent matches were complicated, though, as Thiem is simply not playing good tennis right now. This one was no exception. The Austrian lost the opening set against a pretty solid player.
Virtanen didn't look like an underdog in the first set, as he outplayed Thiem 6-2 in the opening set. The 2020 US Open winner was just outplayed by a player who looked better.
Virtanen totaled 19 winners in that opening set, which was impressive and a lot better than Thiem's 6. The 30-year-old's second set was better, but still not quite as sharp as Virtanen's.
The Finnish player was not letting up that much, still serving and hitting well, as Thiem struggled to stay along. He did manage to keep himself in the match, even after losing his serve, as he broke Virtanen right back.
He did quite well on the Finnish player's second serve, but he needed more if he hoped to win. He had a 30-0 lead on Virtanen's serve at 5-5 in the second set, but rain stopped that game.
When they returned, Virtanen won that game and then pushed hard to finish it off, which he did. The final match of Dominic Thiem's tennis career at the French Open will be remembered as a loss 2-6, 5-7 to Otto Virtanen in the second round of the qualifying.
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