Austria for ATP Cup; friends on court

In the week before Christmas, Sydney is still covered in smoke from the neighbouring forest fires, but the ATP Cup Group E is still scheduled there. Austria, one of the four countries playing in Sydney, will face Croatia, Argentina and Poland and has both Dominic Thiem and Dennis Novak as their main singles team. Quite close friends now, but that wasn't always the case.

As a boy and a junior, Thiem won almost every singles tournament until the under-14 category. "When we were 11 or 12 and I didn’t know him very well, I thought he was really arrogant,” Novak said with a smile. “He won almost every single Austrian under-10, under-12 tournament. He was the clear No. 1. I didn’t think he was very sympathetic.”

Novak then moved to Vienna to train at Gunter Bresnik's tennis academy, and within much closer contact to Dominic his opinion started to change: “After we played and spent a lot of time together, I realised that I saw it from the wrong position,” Novak said. “He’s so down to earth and really nice.”

“At the beginning, we were almost like the same personality. We were thinking the same way and became really good friends right away,” Novak stated. "We were together almost every week until we were 18 or 19, playing junior tournaments and then practising together at the same academy. We were together all the time on the court and in school. We would hang out together when we had time as well.”

Both players turned pro in 2011 and began working their way up the ATP Rankings. The pair even teamed up on home soil at 2016 Kitzbühel and delighted the crowd by advancing to their first ATP Tour doubles final. That was also the time when Thiem made the jump into the top 50, while Novak is still not a top 100 player now.

Novak hopes to break into the top 100 this season as he has hardly any points to defend in the first three months of 2020. Funny thing is; now Thiem is a well established player, he still tries to find time to visit his friend if he can.

“It’s unbelievable. He's No. 4 in the world… It’s not usual for a guy like this to go to Roehampton and watch some players, he has no reason to do that because he has a lot of stuff to do before Wimbledon, so it was very nice of him. It shows that he means it in a good way.”

Novak and Thiem will now pair up for Austria in Sydney. “Dennis is a great player,” Thiem said. “If he’s on fire, he can play way better than his ATP Ranking and he can beat anybody.”

Novak concluded: “I like to be on a team more than on my own, these are all good matches for me at the beginning of the year, to play Top 30 and Top 40 guys. I think it helps me a lot because I’ve played people at that level before, so it’s nothing new for me, but it will be a different atmosphere being on a team.”

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