The courageous resistance of Maximilian Marterer was not rewarded in the end! Postion No. 2 Dominic Thiem held himself harmless in his opening match at the 25th GERRY WEBER OPEN. After 84 minutes the world's No. 8 triumphed over German qualifyer Maximilian Marterer 7:5, 6:3.
The German left-hand-player left the GERRY WEBER STADION with his head held high and applauded enthusiastically by the spectators, because he put up quite a fight for Thiem. Especially in the first set the man from Franken played equally and convinced, as in the qualifying, with his strong service. Marterer played from the baseline quite carefreely and even got three more winner in the first round than the French Open-finalist. Thiem was evidently struggling to find his rhythm in his first match in the lawn season, went to the net for the first time after half an hour and showed weakness returning. At the end of the set Thiem only needed 90 strong seconds for the decision. In the end it was a forehand-volley fault by Marterer that brought Dominic Thiem to a score of 7:5.
But Marterer didn't give in - in this highly entertaining clash and put a lot of pressure on Thiem quite a few times. The man from Lichtenwörth fenced off two break points in spectacular manner, to then hit back without compromising and getting the preliminary decision-break bringing the score to 3:1. Marterer put up a good fight for Thiem right until the end, though, but the decision-making points were all don by Dominic Thiem. The favourite fended off a further two break chances and there was no mercy in his first match point.
"He had played more matches on grass than me and he serves well. That's why I'm just glad to have won in two sets", Thiem stated after his hard-working win. In the Round of 16 he will either meet Robin Haase (Netherlands) or the Spaniard David Ferrer.
