What’s going on with Dominic Thiem?

By the end of the French Open, Dominic Thiem was soaring.

Sure, he’d lost heavily to Rafael Nadal in the semifinals. But it was the second straight year Thiem had reached the final four in Paris, and was the culmination of an impressive European claycourt season that saw him reach finals in Barcelona and Madrid and the semifinals in Rome, helping him compile a 17-5 record.

How he’d yearn for similar form now.

His latest result? A tense, three-set loss in the opening round in Tokyo – as the No.2 seed – to the 46th-ranked Steve Johnson. It was his second straight opening-round loss after bombing in Chengdu to world No.72 Guido Pella.

Since leaving behind the clay courts of Roland Garros, the Austrian has posted a lukewarm win-loss record of 12-9 – and two of those victories came in a Davis Cup zonal tie against opponents ranked outside the top 600.

The Tokyo result precipitated this rather unfortunate stat:

With today's loss, Dominic Thiem officially has a losing career record on hard courts over best of 3 (54-55). That's… dreadful.

— Tumaini Carayol (@tumcarayol) October 3, 2017

His struggles away from clay in 2017 have been somewhat surprising given he flourished as an all-surface specialist in 2016, arriving in the top 10 on the back of titles on hard, clay and grass.

He may still be entrenched in that upper group at No.7, but he sure isn’t playing like it.

Listless performances have proliferated his record; he took just five games in an opening-round loss to world No.222 Ramkumar Ramanathan in Antalya, and fell meekly to the underperforming David Ferrer in the third round in Cincinnati.

But it’s his heart-breaking losses, from winning positions, that have caused the most concern.

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“Well, a lot of players obviously didn’t play as well in this tournament,” Thiem said, explaining away his sixth straight loss to the unseeded Kevin Anderson in the third round in Washington DC, where he was the top seed.

“Pouille, Dimitrov went out surprising and early, for example, and it’s not easy to make this change after a longer break (following Wimbledon).

“That’s why I’m pretty satisfied with my game, it was not bad at all, it was just close, and unlucky.”

It was more bad luck – or more nerves? – when he fronted up the next week against Diego Schwartzman in Montreal, blowing a 5-2 third-set lead and four match points against the pint-sized Argentine to crash out of the tournament.

It was more of the same at the US Open, where he lead the ailing Juan Martin del Potro by two-sets-to-love in the fourth round and by 5-2 in the fourth set – as well as holding two match points – before succumbing in five.

“I was not nervous at all,” he insisted.

“I was nervous in the beginning, in the first game, yes. I mean, I still know the points, of course, when I served out. It was not that I would make something really different now if I would have the opportunity again.

“He (del Potro) played some good shots. One ball was on the net cord, so it was a little bit unlucky, as well. It was not because of the nerves when I served out.”

Unlucky. There’s that word again.

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Whatever is ailing Thiem, he’s running out of opportunities to right it before the season is out. At this time last year he was struggling with physical issues as his gruelling playing schedule caught up with him.

Perhaps now the issue is more mental.

In the coming weeks he’ll head to Shanghai, Vienna and Paris to claim some much-needed match wins and momentum ahead of the ATP Finals in London, where he’s well placed to qualify at fourth position in the Race.

The return of a free-swinging, confident Thiem – like the  one we saw on clay all those months ago – would be a welcome addition to the game.