Stan Wawrinka and Dominic Thiem surged into the top four in the 2016 race to London by capturing respective titles in Dubai and Acapulco on Saturday. It was the second title of the season for each man. Wawrinka had previously prevailed in Chennai, while Thiem’s February swing also featured a triumph in Buenos Aires.
Wawrinka had never won a match in two prior trips to the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships. More of the same almost continued this past week, when he was pushed to 7-5 in the third set by Sergiy Stakhovsky right off the bat. But the fourth-ranked Swiss picked up the pace thereafter and capped off his run in thrilling fashion by holding off Marcos Baghdatis 6-4, 7-6(13).
“I think in general it was a good level,” Wawrinka reflected. “It was tough conditions to play here; [the ball is] flying. It’s fast. Until 6-all in the tiebreak, I was always up with (a) mini-break. I think I hit two double-faults and three quick mistakes. Then it started to be all about nerves. You know, 6-6, 7-7, 10-10. You try to stay there; try to play simple, aggressive. It was good to finish it in two sets.”
Wawrinka-Baghdatis highlights:
Thiem also saw his championship match become more interesting than perhaps many expected after he stole the first set from Bernard Tomic in a tiebreaker. Tomic had served for the opener but could not seal the deal. Despite the hiccup and ensuing loss of the set, the Australian battled back to force a third and even go up by a break in the decider. But Thiem’s Herculean effort in both the mental and physical departments throughout the month was not going to not going to suddenly evaporate at February’s finish line. The 15th-ranked Austrian righted the ship to get the job done 7-6(6), 4-6, 6-3.
“It was unbelievable,” Thiem assured. “These three weeks have been amazing. Winning my first 500 title and first hard-court title, it was just perfect. It was how a final should be, between two young and up-and-coming players. I hope we’re going to play many more finals together. Both of us wanted to win so badly and I’m happy I was the one today.”
The 22-year-old is up to No. 3 in the 2016 race, while Wawrinka climbed 10 spots to fourth.
Thiem-Tomic highlights:
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2 of the best 1HBH’s in the game
Carla Suarez-Navarro’s is my favorite one!
Yep, and she won too. Bodes well for Cuevas today.
LMAO @ he. You’re not out of line with that at all though. Cuevas is a beast. Did what Thiem could not do: 2 clay wins b2b.
oops
Idk. Chose Thiem cuz he has so much time. But I want to see Stan win more slams in the future. Same with Thiem.
Congratulations to both Stan and Thiem for their respective title wins.
Stan was helped by novak’s withdrawal, but still did well to capitalize.
Thiem has had a nice run lately. Good for him. It will give him a nice boost of confidence moving forward. But I am not rapping him yet to do anything at a slam. We will see.
Tapping him to do anything at a slam! Autocorrect is s pain! 🙂
You can turn autocorrect off. Gussie gave me a link for MacBook but there must be one for PCs. Try Googling it.
I had some problems because my sister was with me for five weeks and was using my computer every day and somehow managed to make it revert to autocorrect but I have just now been able to get it to switch off again.