Publications
Partners
Montreal - Austrian second seed Dominic Thiem hit the wall on Friday in a 6-3, 6-1 thrashing at the hands of Russia's eighth-seeded Daniil Medvedev in the ATP Montreal Masters quarter-finals.
The two-time Roland Garros finalist, who had never won a match in Canada over five years of trying before this week, said he did not have a chance as a hectic travel schedule caught up with him in the 56-minute rout.
Thiem came to Canada after winning his home Kitbuhel event on clay and successfully made the surface switch for two winning matches.
But it all caught up to him in the third.
"With all the traveling and short transition, two very tough matches yesterday and two days ago, I think the battery was empty today. I was not on my 100 percent," he said.
"This is just not enough in the quarter-finals of a Masters 1000, especially against a guy like Daniil, who is in a great shape, who is playing amazing tennis.
"I was not able to go the long rallies with him. That's basically the only chance to beat him. It's just a logical score and result what happened today."
Thiem will rest before next week's Cincinnati Masters, the last major tune-up before the US Open starts on August 26.
Thiem went down to Medvedev with 21 unforced errors and no chance at a break point.
The Russian winner, who lost the Barcelona clay final to Thiem in April, struck 18 winners.
Medvedev, 37-15 this season with a Sofia title, will bid for the semis against the winner from 2017 Montreal champion Alexander Zverev and Russian Karen Khachanov.
Thiem stressed that he has no injury problems, but simply need to regain strength for a few days.
"I was very flat today," he said. "It's just logical that I was very, very tired. Maybe against other players it would have been a closer match.
"But he has great momentum, playing amazing, especially on these hard courts. I didn't have any chance like that."
