"I was competing with the three greatest of all time": Dominic Thiem blames 'Big Three' for suffering major injury

Austria’s veteran tennis star Dominic Thiem has blamed the ‘Big Three’ for suffering from injuries that have impacted his career. The 30-year-old was once regarded as one of the best players in the world and constantly competed with the likes of Serbia’s Novak Djokovic, Spain’s Rafael Nadal, and Switzerland’s Roger Federer.

However, things turned upside down in 2021 when Thiem suffered a serious wrist injury. That injury not only forced him to stay out of action for a long period of time but also prevented him from returning to his previous best, even after returning to the court.

Consistent failures in the recent past have pushed Thiem to announce that he will finally retire from professional tennis at the end of the 2024 season. The Wiener Neustadt-born was recently quoted in a report that blamed the ‘Big Three’ for suffering injuries in his career. The former world number three was of the opinion that in order to compete with arguably the group of the greatest players in the history of men’s tennis, he pushed his limits and that came back to haunt him in the future.

"It took a toll, especially as a mere mortal trying to compete with the sport’s three demigods [Federer, Nadal and Djokovic]," said the one-time Grand Slam winner while talking to The Athletic. “That contributed to the injury, definitely. I was competing with the three greatest of all time. That was intense. But also, all the years before I always had a big load and intensity in my practice. That’s something the doctor and many other people said: that at one point the wrist broke because of all the shots I did, all the hard practice I did all those years before. I was always striving to get better and get even closer to the best players in the world.”

Thiem, who won the US Open in 2020 after beating Germany’s Alexander Zverev in a five-set thriller with a score of 2–6, 4–6, 6–4, 6–3, 7–6(8–6), will participate in the fourth and final Grand Slam of the 2024. He will begin his campaign against America’s Ben Shelton.