Goffin Battles Past Thiem

No. 11 seed David Goffin moved into his first Australian Open quarter-final on Monday, scoring a hard-fought 5-7, 7-6(4), 6-2, 6-2 win in Melbourne over eighth seed Dominic Thiem.

The win marked a repeat victory for the Belgian, who also defeated Thiem in the third-round of the 2016 Australian Open. Goffin improves his FedEx ATP Head2Head rivalry against Thiem to 5-3.

Next up for Goffin is the winner between No. 15 seed Grigor Dimitrov and Denis Istomin. Goffin leads his FedEx ATP Head2Head rivalry over Istomin 1-0, with the lone win coming last year at Wimbledon. Dimitrov lead his FedEx ATP Head2Head over Goffin 1-0, but they haven’t played since the 2014 US Open.

The first set was punctuated by difficulty holding serve, with Goffin and Thiem’s strong returns producing five breaks in 12 games. But it was the Austrian who grabbed the critical break of serve at 5-5 and then comfortably held to love in the next game to grab the early lead.

Both players traded service holds throughout the second set, but Thiem fought off four set points on his serve at 4-5. Goffin remained mentally tough and raced to a 3/0 lead in the tie-break, holding his slight advantage to level the match at one set each.

Goffin appeared energized at capturing the second set and continued to relentlessly retrieve difficult shots from Thiem in the baseline exchanges. Meanwhile, the eighth seed struggled to find his range, hitting 16 winners to 30 unforced errors in the final two sets.

The Belgian broke Thiem twice in both the third and fourth sets, but saved his best tennis for the final stages of the match. Goffin ripped 12 winners to just three unforced errors in the fourth set, convincingly serving out the match on his first attempt to wrap up the win in two hours and 43 minutes.