Home favourite and 2019 champion Dominic Thiem reached his third quarter-final on clay this year after rallying from a first-set beatdown against Zhang Zhizhen at the Generali Open in Kitzbuehel Wednesday.
Thiem took time to adjust to starkly different conditions to the night match he played on Tuesday before pulling away to a 1-6, 6-3, 6-2 win. The 29-year-old Austrian crushed a trademark down-the-line fadeaway backhand from deep behind the baseline to break in the opening game of the third set and never relinquished his lead.
“The first set was so tough, with completely different conditions to last night. I felt it was 15 degrees warmer and the ball was bouncing completely different. I didn’t know what was going on and it felt that he was playing so fast,” said Thiem, who did not offer up a break point in the final two sets.
“I just tried to put the first set out of my head and start the match from zero. I had a pretty good start to the second set and that was the turnaround today.
“He was playing very fast, very flat, and if I wasn’t aggressive enough he would put me away, like he did in the first set. So I tried to play more offensively and make him have more mistakes. I did a good job of that in sets two and three.”
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Thiem lost nine of his first 10 matches in 2023, and came into this tournament No. 116 in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings. He was 6-5 during the clay swing through Roland Garros but went winless during the grass swing, which included a valiant fifth-set tie-break loss to Stefanos Tsitsipas in the first round of Wimbledon.
Suffering a tear in his right wrist that forced him to miss nine months from June 2021-March 2022, Thiem is looking for his first title since claiming his lone major at the US Open in September 2020.
The former World No. 3 next faces a first-time meeting with Frenchman Arthur Rinderknech, who took out second seed Yannick Hanfmann of Germany 7-6(3), 6-3.
Alex Molcan staged one of the greatest comebacks of the season to defeat Sebastian Ofner 4-6, 7-5, 7-6(5). The Slovakian saved two match points trailing 0-5 in the second set as he began a winning streak of nine straight games to lead 2-0 in the third set.
On the cusp of victory, Ofner suddenly began to struggle to put his serve into play while Molcan knuckled down and played rock-sold tennis. The left-hander will next play Argentine Sebastian Baez, who enjoyed a crushing 6-1, 6-2 win over sixth-seed Spaniard Roberto Carballes Baena. The 22-year-old Baez has dropped just nine games through the first two rounds.
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