“In the first set, Thiem looked like he’d already lost. “I had never been that nervous or that tight before. My arms and legs were heavy, my strokes weren’t fast,” he told me. Zverev took the first in half an hour, then the second shortly thereafter. The commentators were ready to stick a fork in Thiem. But Thiem has alligator blood—he hangs around. He managed to break Zverev at a crucial moment and take the third set. As the match was winding down in the fifth, neither player could close it out. Thiem was cramping up; Zverez was pushing serves in at 70 mph. Ultimately Thiem outlasted the German, taking the match in a tiebreak, 8-6.” Naomi Osaka won a pretty weird women’s final at the US Open. But in the Men’s final, things went full 2020. For one brief moment in time, I served harder than the US Open runner up. Dominic Thiem Won the Weirdest U.S. Open Ever. (Unlike Djokovic, neither of these guys wanted to go for the jugular…)