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By Giri Nathan
[vc_empty_space height="15px"]Dominic Thiem, who is not the smoothest talker even in the best of times, has found himself in a pickle. In late April, the world No. 3 voiced his discomfort with contributing to a relief fund for lower-ranked players. “No tennis player is fighting to survive, even those who are much lower-ranked. None of them are going to starve,” he told the Austrian newspaper Krone, while criticizing the “professional manner” of some players. On its face, this is a bad look for someone who had already earned $1.7 million before the tour shut down, and has cleared nearly $24 million in career earnings. He didn’t help his cause by bungling an exchange with the young Algerian tennis player Ines Ibbou, currently ranked 620 in the WTA this year, who criticized Thiem’s comments from the perspective of a struggling player.