Diego Schwartzman rallies to beat Dominic Thiem and head to French Open semifinal.
2 points from loss, he rallies in 5-hour match; Nadal next
Diego Schwartzman played through the wind and rain, and into the dark of night, against Dominic Thiem at the French Open, contesting a total of 376 points spread out across five sets and 5 hours, 8 minutes, knowing all the while he’d never won a match of this magnitude.
And so, as he kept wasting chances to seize control of their quarterfinal Tuesday night, kept letting sets slip away, Schwartzman yelled at himself or at his coaches, put his hands on his hips or smirked at his mistakes.
Then, two points from defeat against the U.S. Open champion and twotime runner-up at Roland Garros, Schwartzman found his way and emerged with a 7-6 (1), 5-7, 6-7 (6), 7-6 (5), 6-2 victory Tuesday by taking the last four games against a fading Thiem.
“I mean, we both gave everything,” said the No. 3-seeded Thiem, who is good friends with Schwartzman. “The thing in tennis is that there is one loser, one winner. Despite ( being ) so disappointed, I’m still happy for him.”
The 12th-seeded Schwartz man, entered this match with an 0-3 record in major quarterfinals. He acknowledged that weighed on him.
“I was just so nervous,” he said. “I saw the chance today.”
It was a grueling contest in which more than 100 of the points lasted at least nine strokes — frequently going past 20 or even 30 shots. Good as he is at speeding along the baseline on those kinds of extended exchanges, Schwartzman did some of his best work at the net, winning the point on 62% of his trips forward.
The 5-foot-7 Schwartzman’s serve is a liability, his biggest weakness and, so far, impediment to greater success. But while he lost nine of his service games, he made up for that with one of his many other skills — returning — and broke Thiem 10 times.
The ninth break put Schwartzman up 4-2 in the fifth when Thiem netted a backhand, and the last ended it, when Thiem put two drop shots into the net.
Thiem had been 17-1 in Grand Slam action this year, including a run to the final at the Australian Open in February. He also had won 26 of his past 30 matches at Roland Garros, with the losses all coming against Rafael Nadal or Novak Djokovic.
But all of the energy expended by Thiem’s legs and mind over the past five weeks, in New York and in Paris, took a toll, including a five-setter in his previous match. From early on against Schwartzman, Thiem would bail out of points by trying mediocre drop shots.
“To be honest, I was over the limit today,” Thiem said, describing himself as “physically and mentally on the edge.”
Thiem twice was two points from winning at 6-5 in the fourth set, and again at 5-all in that tiebreaker.
“To win that match, I should have done it in four,” said Thiem, who was trying to become only the fourth man in the Open era, which began in 1968, to get to at least the semifinals in Paris for five consecutive years.
Schwartzman next will face 12-time champ Nadal, who swept 19-year-old Jannik Sinner 7-6, 6-4, 6-1.
On the women’s side, 131st-ranked Nadia Podoroska became the first female qualifier to get to the final four at Roland Garros in the Open era, beating No. 3 seed Elina Svitolina 6-2, 6-4. Podoroska will face unseeded Iga Swiatek.
The other women’s quarterfinals are Wednesday.