THE Vienna crowd was up and about following the Erste Bank Open final with top seeded Austrian, Dominic Thiem claiming the title in front of a home crowd. It was far from a straight forward victory, with the fifth ranked player having to come from a set down to knock off Argentinian fifth seed, Diego Schwartzman, 3-6 6-4 6-3.

Heading into the match the players were 1-1 for the year, however Thiem had a 4-2 lead in their six previous encounters. It was not the most clinical match from the Austrian, managing to get just 62 per cent of his first serves in compared to his opponents’ 72 per cent. While Schwartzman is not known for his serving – at 170cm he is not known as a huge serving machine – but he still provided consistency off the first serve at 72 per cent. But Thiem was able to still win his fair share off Schwartzman’s serve, reducing the South American to just 65 per cent of first serve points won.

While there was little doubt who the crowd was behind, they would have been a little nervous when Schwartzman broke Theim in the fifth game to go 3-2 up and held his nerve, before breaking him again in the ninth game to lock away the first set, 6-3. At one point it almost looked like Schwartzman was going to take it out in straight sets, forcing Thiem to earn every single point, but it was the Austrian who crucially broke in the ninth game and took out the set on serve, 6-4.

The world number five brought that form into the final set, breaking Schwartzman in the opening game of the match and from there was able to hold off the Argentinian, eventually stepping it up when returning at 5-3 to break him a second time – as Schwartzman had done to him in the first set – and take out the final game and match, 6-3.

Thiem’s victory moved him closer to world number four, Daniil Medvedev, and gained crucial breathing space on world number six, Alexander Zverev.