Clive Brunskill/Getty Images
PARIS — With no prologue, I recently asked Dominic Thiem whether the following number sequences meant anything to him: 2 and 4; 4 and 8; and 4 and 2.
He did not hesitate.
“Yeah, sure, that is my head-to-head,” he said, laughing. “I know those numbers very well.”
They are worth retaining. Few players have multiple victories over Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer, the tennis titans who have left little room for others to get time in the sun.
But Thiem, the son of an Austrian tennis coach and the pet project of another one, has managed to muscle his way into the light.