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It happened in Wimbledon. Dominic Thiem , Alexander Zverev and Stefanos Tsitsipas , fifth, sixth and seventh seeded, went to the entrance street. The situation almost reproduces in the United States Open. Zverev was safe, after exposing himself again to the five sets in a match where he clearly dominated Radu Albot. Thiem, who was arriving convalescently from a stomach virus, and Tsitsipas precipitated his farewell. Without so much pedigree, but last year champion in Paris-Bercy and eighth preclassified in New York, also Karen Khachanov , another of those who points.

The balance in the Grand Slam tournaments makes it clear that it is still too early to have any of them. Thiem, with two consecutive Roland Garros finals, is the one who has prospered the most, but, after winning last spring Indian Wells and after taking the Nadal limit in the 2018 US Open quarterfinals, it gives the impression that his sphere of influence returns to restrict himself to clay. He has never passed eighth in Wimbledon or in Australia, where in January he retired due to injury when he was four games behind the loss to Alexie Popyrin, 149th.

Thiem will turn Tuesday 26 years old. Tsitsipas just made 21. Zverev is 22. The Austrian, who has been working with Chilean Nicolás Massú since the beginning of the year, would be left out of the so-called NextGen , in an intergenerational space between those who continue to dominate the competition, already more or less immersed in the thirty, and those who intend to run to take over.

There are several common denominators in their fragility. Everyone is physically vulnerable, they feel the difference between tournaments to the best of three sets and the four long-distance competitions. Except Thiem, older, as it was written, and more temperate, are unstable in the emotional field, prone to anger and with little tolerance for frustration.

No tour in the 'big ones'

Tsitsipas, semifinalist this year at the Australian Open, suffered cramps in New York before losing in four sets against Andrey Rublev , who, at age 21, starts knocking on the door. The Greek ended up arguing loudly with the chair judge. Zverev celebrates each triumph as if it were a resounding success, an obvious sign of weakness. He has already reached number three in the ranking, but he only has two presences in the majors' quarters, both in Roland Garros. The matches are long. Three situations similar to that of the game against Albot have happened to him this same season: he needed to go to the five sets to win Millman and Lajovic in Roland Garros after winning the first two, as in the second round of the Australian Open, before Jeremy Chardy. He has tried, in both cases fleetingly, with Juan Carlos Ferrero and Ivan Lendl in his corner.

Above the aforementioned Rublev, who eliminated Federer in the eighths of Cincinnati, is also Russian Daniil Medvedev , champion in Ohio and finalist in Montreal, who has jumped to the top 5 and started overwhelmingly in this last major of the course. It intends to overcome for the first time the eighth in a tournament of this rank. A separate case is that of Nick Kyrgios , a loose verse of low reliability. The Australian, who will play against Antoine Hoang in the second round, gathers enough arguments to aim for everything, but his war seems to be somewhere else.

At 24 he still waits to get into the top eight of a major and, far from attenuating the display of frivolous and unsupportive attitudes, he persists in feeding the parallel show that has been created around him. This Wednesday he retracted through Twitter after accusing the ATP of corruption.

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