Dominic Thiem advances after brush with deadly snake at Brisbane\u060c<\/p>\n
BRISBANE, Australia \u2014 Former U.S. Open champion Dominic Thiem faced one of Australia's most venomous snakes in a qualifying match at the Brisbane International on Saturday.<\/p>\n
The former world number 3 was beaten by Australian James McCabe, 20, in a first round qualifying match when fans on the pitch spotted the snake.<\/p>\n
Security personnel quickly arrived, but the referee had to stop play as the snake slithered onto the pitch, to the shock of players and fans.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really like animals, especially exotic animals,\u201d Thiem said. \u201cBut they said it was a really venomous snake and it was close to children, so it was a really dangerous situation.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s something that\u2019s never happened to me and I\u2019ll definitely never forget.\u201d<\/p>\n
The snake \u2013 identified as a 50-centimetre eastern brown snake and one of Australia's deadliest reptiles \u2013 was quickly safely removed, allowing play to resume.<\/p>\n
But Thiem, 30, was not yet out of danger as he had to save three match points before equalizing by winning the second set tie-break. He then won the deciding set for a 2-6, 7-6 (4), 6-4 victory.<\/p>\n
The Austrian, currently ranked No. 98 after several years due to a serious wrist injury, will face either Italian Giulio Zeppieri or another Australian, Omar Jasika, in the final qualifying round tomorrow.<\/p>\n
Thiem reached the Australian Open final in 2020 when he pushed champion Novak Djokovic to five sets, and he won the US Open later that year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dominic Thiem advances after brush with deadly snake at Brisbane\u060c BRISBANE, Australia \u2014 Former U.S. Open champion Dominic Thiem faced one of Australia's most venomous snakes in a qualifying match at the Brisbane International on Saturday. The former world number 3 was beaten by Australian James McCabe, 20, in a first round qualifying match when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17277,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[8461,628,6989,8462,8459,8463,8460],"class_list":["post-17276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-sports","tag-advances","tag-brisbane","tag-brush","tag-deadly","tag-dominic","tag-snake","tag-thiem"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17276"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17278,"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17276\/revisions\/17278"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}