Thiem recalls: "The tournament director really begged us not to party."
As he retires in October and prepares to play the last Grand Slam of his career in New York, Dominic Thiem spoke to L'Équipe about his first and only Grand Slam title, at the US Open in 2020.
Winning the title at the end of a very special edition, Covid and confinement obliged, the Austrian looked back on a coronation as magnificent as it was strange: "There are two ways of looking at it. It's sad to have won my only Grand Slam in front of 50 people, with no audience, no atmosphere.
But it's also special to have won in unprecedented circumstances, with the gates closed. The tournament director (Stacey Allaster) really begged us not to party, not to get out of the bubble and stay in the hotel.
We stuck to our guns. There was plenty to do in Manhattan! We celebrated with my team, in my room, with pizza.
It's probably the only time a player has celebrated a Grand Slam title in this way.
I only had one beer, I was so tired. I couldn't sleep, there was so much adrenalin in my body.
We woke up at 6 a.m. for the press marathon, which was very long. Being hungover wouldn't have been a brilliant idea."
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I liked how they didn't let Novak play after he played the year before but let hundreds of thousands people sit next to each other unmasked and without proof of being vaccinated. Novak was the favorite and likely would have had another title. Same at the Australian that year.
Never forget...