PARIS – Austrian sixth seed Dominic Thiem got his French Open campaign off to a quick-fire start on Sunday, beating an out-of-sorts Bernard Tomic 6-4 6-0 6-2 as he embarked on a bid to go one round better than he did last year.
After a tight first set, the 39th-ranked Australian won just two more games as, looking to keep the points short on a hot and fast Court Suzanne Lenglen, he sprayed the ball long and wide in his quest for winners.
In all he made 33 unforced errors to Thiem’s 10, while the ace count was 11 to three in the Austrian’s favour.
“I am happy I had a good start,” Thiem said courtside after the match, though in truth, he might have preferred a tougher workout in keeping with his ambitions for the tournament.
Speaking before Sunday’s match, Thiem, a semi-finalist in 2016, put himself in the category of “players who can go very deep here (and)… make big surprises” behind clear favourite Rafa Nadal.
The Austrian and the Spaniard have met three times so far in 2017, including the quarter-finals of the Rome Masters, where 23-year-old Thiem became the only player to beat Nadal on clay this season.