Tennis Updates: By his standards, Dominic Thiem's 2021 season has been a disappointment. He has a 9-9 win-loss record this year, with his best finish being a semifinal appearance at the Madrid Masters.
The Austrian had previously acknowledged being demotivated after fulfilling a longtime ambition by winning the 2020 US Open. During a recent appearance on the Tennis United series, the 28-year-old said that winning his first Major hurt his mental health. Thiem said he needed to find a "new dream" to keep him motivated.
"It was more like, now what-" Thiem said. "Because there was not so much new pressure or something like that going on. But before the US Open, when I had tough periods or lost tough matches I've always told myself 'it's tough now, and it's not so much fun right now, but there's still this big dream and this big goal in the back of my head."'
"And obviously after I did that in the next tough period of time, after the Australian Open, this thing of, well, there's still something I really want to achieve, it was gone. So it was a new situation. I was trying to find a new dream, but talking about it with all kind of people, family, friends and other athletes, of course that helped even more," he added.
In his fourth final, the Austrian won his first Major. In the 2018 and 2019 Roland Garros finals, he lost to Rafael Nadal, while in the 2020 Australian Open final, he was defeated by Novak Djokovic in five sets.
Thiem was down two sets and a break in the final against Alexander Zverev in Flushing Meadows last year, but he came back to win 2-6, 4-6, 6-4, 6-3, 7-6. (6), as per live tennis news reports.
The focus of Dominic Thiem then moved to mental health in sports and social media abuse. In recent years, online harassment in sports, particularly tennis, has been prevalent, with several players lately claiming they had been targeted after matches.
Thiem described some of the remarks he got after defeats on social media as "crazy."
"We, everybody is suffering from that (online abuse), I guess. And I can only speak about us, I mean, the messages we get after mostly lost matches. It's insane," Thiem said.
During the conversation, Dominic Thiem also mentioned how the ATP Tour may be lonely due to frequent travel to tournaments all over the world and being away from family and friends.
Thiem feels that as he gets older, he will require more time away from the tour to replenish his batteries.
"At home, it's not so difficult because I have my family, my friends there. I enjoy the time a lot. So I forget about most of the problems. But the Tour can get very lonely sometimes," Thiem said. "And I think it's important to find a kind of work-life balance."