RG17 Highs and lows: #13, Thiem's hottest shot

Some stars passed on playing in the French Open, while others weren't allowed in. You know all their names. What matters is what took place inside and outside the lines in Paris. On the heels of a fairly predictable and alternately off-the-chain major event, here are the thoroughly vetted, unequivocal–or entirely subjective–best and worst moments from the 2017 French Open.

See No. 14 here.

13

Shotmaking remains a virtuous art in tennis, and surely Dominic Thiem–even at 23, or especially at 23–is one of its masters. Pay attention to most every match he plays. It will always be Thiem time.

He and Bernard Tomic went early in their first-rounder in delivering the top point of the tournament.

Tweet me if you think you have one that usurps it. Just because a final blow was delivered in a first-round point does not mean it mattered less.

For Thiem, Roland Garros in 2017 provided something of a turning point as well as a shortfall. Weird how that works, but such is tennis. He made the men's singles semifinal round, the same spot he reached in 2016.

Only to take the court against Nadal and muster just seven games. Even so, Thiem bested Djokovic in straight sets to notch his spot in said semis. On clay courts and elsewhere, though, he has landed zero wins against the titans of tennis when it mattered most. He withstood a blowout against Djokovic, winning just one game, in the Rome semifinal leading up to Paris and took a match from Nadal this season.

For what it's worth, he did outdo Nadal in one respect, if a relatively superficial one:

Where Thiem goes from here: It's anyone's guess. He might win a major yet this season, or he might be five years off. He's uber-talented, prone to nerves and yet given also to swinging out on every shot. Thiem's single-fisted missiles sometimes simply landed out more than they found their desired marks on the red dirt.

That won't cut it against Nadal, but Thiem will continue to cut an imposing figure among the ATP elite. The tour's Top 5 can't be far off for the Austrian artist.

Follow Jon on Twitter @jonscott9.