Dominic Thiem Admits He’s Played A Lot Of Tennis Already This Year And It’s Taking Its Toll

He’s young, yes, but he’s playing a lot of tennis this year. And that’s Dominic Thiem. August hasn’t even started the 22-year-old has already played 20 events and 63 matches.

And after Kitzbuhel on clay last week, he had to retire from Toronto during his match Wednesday with Kevin Anderson due to a hip injury.

Thiem isn’t scheduled to play the Olympics, so he’ll take a break. But he agrees that maybe he’s played too much and he, nor did anyone else, expect such great results so soon.

“I think a little bit difference is for sure that I didn’t expect to play that many matches and that many tournaments and go that deep in almost every tournament,” Thiem said Wednesday. “And last year also I played a lot of tournaments, but obviously I had a couple of first-round and second-round losses. That’s different.

“I will have to get used to play that many matches. And also, for sure now it’s a little bit kind of situation that the body, yeah, it doesn’t want to 100%, so I have to give it a little bit time to recover 100%.”

Despite that, he says he’ll stick with the plan and fortunately he didn’t schedule as many events for the second half of the season anyway.

“But we will stick to the plan, and I think it was the right thing to do. But maybe I took it easier a little bit too late, so now I have couple of problems which are caused to this,” he said. “Probably the second half is a little bit easier. Not so many tournaments.”

Thiem said he will return to Austria to get an MRI on his hip. And he needs a break to stay in the Top 10 and maybe get to London.

“Like now I think I’m not in the right shape to play the tennis what I would need to maybe qualify for the O2, so I just try to get my form back, to get back my good shape from the first half of the season, and then we will see,” he said.