Dominic Thiem was facing two set points on his serve at 4-5 in the first set against Novak Djokovic. This wasn’t an unfamiliar position for the 23-year-old Austrian. In his five previous matches with the Serb, he had won just one set. Last month in Rome, he had won just one game.
This time, though, Thiem knew exactly what to do. He knew what had worked for him this spring when his back was to the wall and he absolutely had to have a point. He had done it when he saved five match points to beat Grigor Dimitrov in Madrid. He had done it when he saved three more to beat Sam Querrey in Rome. Now it was his turn to do it against Djokovic.
As he has for the last two months, Thiem went on the attack, played to his strength, took the rally into his own hands, and trusted that his mix of power and spin would see him through safely. At 15-40, Thiem ripped the first forehand he saw to within a foot of the baseline, raced in behind it and knocked off a winning volley. Thiem always hits big from the baseline, but he rarely follows his ground strokes into the net right away. But as he has learned recently, the best thing for him to do when he’s nervous or desperate is to double down on his own offensive skills. The sooner he pulls the trigger, the better for him. It’s not a tactic for everyone; you have to be supremely confident in your natural shot-making ability. But it’s a tactic that has worked for years for another pretty fair clay-courter: Rafael Nadal.