Days after the highs of winning his first ever Grand Slam title, Dominic Thiem’s family is being sued by his former long-time coach Günter Bresnik, according to German news agency DerStandard.
The World No 3 is said to have had a rough split with Bresnik, who has coached Thiem since he was eight, last year ahead of the clay-season.
The association had started when Thiem’s father Wolfgang started to work at Bresnik’s academy in Vienna in 1997. But now with the impending lawsuit, Wolfgang asserts the relationship has become unpleasant.
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“It really makes me sad,” Thiem senior said during a conversation on ServusTV on Monday.
“I was a good friend of Günter Bresnik. We are now so far that he has sued us. The situation is unpleasant, but the story is over for me.”
“(Bresnik) taught (Thiem) certain things, no question about it. From my point of view, very, very little progress has been made in the last four or five years. You have to also say clearly. (Thiem) has developed into an independent person, he is the boss of the team. Before he was only the performer, had little freedom. But things have been improving since the separation.”
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The split, according to Thiem, was due to Bresnik’s tight control over the player who wanted some freedom. Meanwhile, Bresnik, in an interview with Austria Press Agency in March, claimed that the Thiems lacked ‘honesty, loyalty and values.’
“Every day I realize more and more how unfair they were with me. I still don’t understand anything,” Bresnik had said.
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“Honesty, loyalty, values…there wasn’t much adhered to. If I owe everything to someone, then I can’t deal with him that way. Wolfgang would be a club trainer in Seebenstein and Dominic would be a future player.
In May, speaking to the Kronen-Zeitung in Austria, Bresnik added:
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“It is clear that the story with Dominic hurts a lot. It was almost a life’s work for me. Also very difficult for me to lose Wolfgang. He was not just a great coach for me, but a long-time friend. If I had the opportunity to train with a player like Dominic, I would always take it.
“It may be a problem for parents if someone has been called a Thiem-maker. I never had a problem with Dominic, never had a problem with his parents. How that came about is still unclear to me to this day.”
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Since his split with Bresnik, Thiem has started working with 2004 Athens Olympics gold medallist (in men’s singles and doubles) and former World No 9 Nicolas Massu, under whose guidance he won his maiden Grand Slam last week.
