No 1 seed Daniil Medvedev insisted Dominic Thiem wasn’t an easy opponent even though he claimed a straight-set victory with just six games lost. In the Vienna round-of-16, Medvedev saw off home favorite Thiem 6-3 6-3. Even though Medvedev completed his win with just six games lost, the match lasted an hour and 38 minutes.
“It was a tough match. [Around] one hour, 40 [minutes], and you know when it’s one hour, 40 minutes, even if you win 6-3, 6-3, that it was a tough match. It could have gone either way. At one moment in the match I started to put a lot of pressure on his serve.
I was serving good myself, so didn’t [give] him to many opportunities on my serve, and that was the key today I think,” Medvedev said, per the ATP website.
How Medvedev defeated Thiem?
No break points were seen until the seventh game, when Medvedev realized his fourth break point of the game to take a 4-3 lead.
After going up by a break, Medvedev faced a break point in the eighth game but managed to save and to go 5-3 up. In the ninth game – when Thiem was serving to stay in the first set – Medvedev earned his second break to win the first set.
After winning the first set, Medvedev claimed the first break of the second set in the fourth game. Then, Medvedev held on to his serve the rest of the match to complete a two-set win. “That was the first game in the match where I actually won the first point on his serve.
Otherwise, it was 40/0 for him all the time, so a little bit tougher to break. This game I managed to put pressure on him. He had two or three game points where I managed to bring it back to deuce which is really important. When I won this game, I got a little bit of momentum during the match,” Medvedev reflected.
