Quarters defeat going to be stuck in my mind forever: Thiem

Austrian tennis player Dominic Thiem, who lost to world number one Rafael Nadal in an epic quarter-final clash of the US Open, has said that the match is going to be stuck in his mind forever and he would never forget it.

"It's going to be stuck in my mind forever. I'm going to remember this match, for sure. Tennis is cruel sometimes because I think this match didn't really deserve a loser. But there has to be one," ATP official website quoted Thiem, as saying.

"And I would say if we skip the first set, [it] was a really open match from the beginning to the end. The way it ended up in the fifth set tiebreaker, there it's 50/50," he added.

The 25-year-old had given a tough fight to Nadal, but eventually fell in the concluding set which was decided by a tiebreaker.

Thiem became the second player after Philipp Kohlschreiber of Germany to defeat Nadal 6-0 in the opening set of the match.

He has reached the fourth round of the US Open three times out of his last four appearances but this is the first time that he made it till the quarter-final of a Grand Slam event outside French Open.