OPINION: No asterisk needed as Thiem proves a worth grand slam champion
And so, at long last, a major title for tennis's Generation Next, those ageing heirs apparent who have stood around at grand slam tournaments like customers in the queue at a busy delicatessen without a number.
Regardless of the quality or the width, some will remain determined to remember the first COVID-era men's major for its absences. Instead of a Big Three scalp, Thiem's crowning feat is to be just the fifth player in the open era to come from two sets down to win a major final, and the first at the US Open in 71 years.Thus Thiem endured the grinding seven-match best-of-five-sets grand slam format that demands you eliminate every obstacle that stands in your way. Even if for Thiem the most imposing appeared in his shaving mirror on the morning of the match.
While the little man on Thiem's shoulder seemed to be screaming into his ear that he had an opportunity of a lifetime, Zverev turned nagging doubts into lost games with a brilliant early bombardment. In a blink, Thiem was two sets down and standing so far behind the baseline to receive serve that, in a normal year, an usher might have asked to see his ticket.
Thiem was the first new male major champion since Marin Cilic won the 2014 US Open. Andy Murray, then a member of the now-disbanded Big Four, was the only other to seize the most significant silverware in that period.Federer and Nadal chose not to play this US Open; Djokovic chose to carelessly slap a ball that hit a lineswoman. The Big Three were not bound and tied and held and held at gunpoint in the locker room.
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