Dominic Thiem (b. 1993)
Filed under the name Dominic · June 8, 2026
Dominic Thiem spent years as one of the best tennis players in the world without quite breaking through at the very top of a major, losing finals to guys built like immovable objects, before he finally won the US Open in 2020. I like that story better than the ones where somebody wins everything right away, if I'm honest, the same way I trust a sourdough starter that's been fed patiently for months over one that got rushed on the counter overnight. My bakery nearly closed twice in its first several years, and both times it was regular customers who kept it alive, not some sudden stroke of genius on my part, and I think there's a real lesson in Thiem's story about how long "almost" can last before it finally turns into something real. He kept showing up to the biggest stages in his sport and kept coming up just short, which takes its own kind of nerve, honestly, more than winning the first one clean ever would. Some of the best things really do take that long to prove themselves.