Tennis – ATP 1000 – Madrid Open – Madrid, Spain – May 12, 2018 Austria’s Dominic Thiem celebrates winning his semi final match against South Africa’s Kevin Anderson REUTERS/Paul Hanna
May 12, 2018
MADRID (Reuters) – Austrian Dominic Thiem beat Kevin Anderson on Saturday for the first time at the seventh attempt to reach the Madrid Open final for the second successive year.
The fifth seed won 6-4 6-2 as he continued the scintillating form that ended top seed Rafa Nadal’s year-long unbeaten run on clay the day before.
South African Anderson, seeded sixth, was playing in his first Masters 1000 semi-final but faded after a solid start, unable to make an impression on Thiem’s heavy baseline game.
While Thiem had a 0-6 record against Anderson, the pair had never met on the Austrian’s favored clay surface and the 24-year-old dictated the longer rallies.
Thiem needed a single break of serve in the opening set and broke twice in the second to wrap up victory.
He said his victory over Nadal had been a timely boost after being thrashed by the Spaniard in Monte Carlo.
“It gave me a huge boost of confidence,” he said. “That’s for sure. But in the same time, it was a completely different matchup today.
“There was also the fact that I never beat him. It was 0-6 before today. Some things were a little bit shaky. But I was keeping my level up from yesterday, so that was a great thing.”
He will play either Alexander Zverev or Canadian Denis Shapovalov in Sunday’s final.
(Reporting by Martyn Herman,; Editing by Ed Osmond)
