Thiago Seyboth Wild became the youngest Brazilian player to claim an ATP title in Santiago de Chile last March beating Casper Ruud in the final before the shutdown due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Unfortunately the Brazilian Next Gen player was the first professional player to test positive for the coronavirus weeks later. The 20-year-old player has fully recovered from the virus, but he will not be able to play on the ATP circuit, as the Tour remains suspended until 1st August.
“I have been trying to practice almost every day and give myself as much activity as possible. I have been trying to live a normal life but there is nothing normal about it these days ? I would say that as a kid I have always thought that I could beat anybody, that I could be the best, that I could win the tourament. It does not really matter where I was, and it’s something I have taken with me to today”, said Seyboth Wild.
Seyboth Wild said that his main goal is to win a Grand Slam title and become a world number 1.
“A lot of people have already asked me about being world number 1 or winning a Grand Slam title. I would go with being number 1 because to be number 1 you have to win a Grand Slam at least”.
Seyboth Wild won the the US Open Boys singles title in 2018. At professional level he won a total of 39 matches in 2019, including four against the Top 100. Last November he won the Guayaquil Challenger title in Equador. During his career he has been supported by his father. Who manages tennis academies. Thiago began playing tennis at the age of four following in the footsteps of his father, who played tennis too. He says that his father is his hero.
“He always supported me in anything I would like to do, but obviously he liked tennis better, he gave me my first raquet and always introduced me to tournaments and to tennis places and to people who played really well in his time. He taught me as a person to be loyal to myself and to the people I love because that is how you have to work. You have to trust your team and you have to be 100 percent open with them so they can work their best with you”, said Seyboth Wild.
Seyboth Wild entered the 2020 season with just one ATP-Tour win, but he has scored seven wins. He has won eight of his eleven matches against the top 100 in the past 52 weeks, including wins over Hugo Dellien, Thiago Monteiro, Marco Cecchinato, Juan Ignacio Londero, Casper Ruud and Cristian Garin.
“I think I am playing every match as my last. I have always played every match as if my life depended on it. I think that going on court and believing you can beat anybody is the most important thing for a tennis player. I think that if you go on court thinking that you are playing a top 20 you are definitely gonna lose. I twill overcome you. So I think that believing in yourself and thinking that you can beat anybody is the key for that”, said Seyboth Wild.
During his young career Seyboth Wild has been inspired by three-time Grand Slam champion and former world number 1 Gustavo Kuerten, who won three Roland Garros titles in 1997 (beating Sergi Bruguera), in 2000 (beating Magnus Norman) and 2001 (against Alex Corretja). At the Masters finals in 1999 in Lisbon he became the only player that decade to beat Pete Sampras and André Agassi in back-to-back matches.
“Gustavo always talked so much about how intense I should play, about how I should play, about how I should focus on my level and let the ranking be a consequence of how I am playing, how the results are going. He is an inspiration for me just like he is for most of the players out there. He was number 1 and beat Pete Sampras and André Agassi in the same tournament, like who really does that ?”.