Stefanos Tsitsipas despaired when he saw that his parallel backhand stayed in the net.
That hit was worth a break ball, an option to correct the blur from his first game serving the third set.
He was so desperate that the next blow missed him with the backhand still stuck in the throat.
He was still recriminating the mistake and already had another to regret.
He was desperate because he knew that the game was slipping away from him.
For a moment it seemed that Dominic Thiem had left the game but there he was back, coming back in the fifth game of the final set.
Putting the finishing touches on the first victory of the ATP Finals
(7-6 (5), 4-6, 6-3)
.
It cost him to close it, yes.
From the end of the second set,
Thiem seemed to notice discomfort
.
He did not move with the same ease, perhaps due to problems in his right knee or that foot injury that already made him give up the 1,000 Masters in Paris.
Maybe that's why in that fifth game of the third heat he fell into a loop trying to close the points as soon as possible.
Up to four times he tried to fasten it with a winning backhand.
Two were long and two were wide.
He sweated more than in any other, more than 10 minutes, until he won it and went 4-1.
Too much for Tsitsipas, who had already let out a gesture of discouragement elsewhere.
Come on! ", The Austrian shouted. Or was it" Let's go! ", As he writes on social networks for reasons that have already been forgotten. He shook his fist and the roar sounded cavernous in
that immense O2 that the pandemic has left empty
The lack of an audience has consequences: that tennis players, who already talk a lot to each other, replace their shortness of breath with their own, and that everything is heard. Thiem himself, who was now cheering, had thrown a row monumental an hour before, wondering how it was possible that that impeccable forehand failed him at the most critical moment of the first set, he listened, because in the third he brought out the winners machine.
It comes out to call it revenge for last year's final, but it is with an asterisk because
that triumph of the Greek was worth the title
and this only the first points of the group stage.
They will have time for more: the first time they met was on this same track in 2016, when Tsitsipas, number one in the junior world, arrived as a guest to spar and a year ago they saw each other in the final.
This Masters Cup, with only Nadal and Djokovic over 30 years old, already has the scent of relief.
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