There are two ways to look at this. Either Alex de Minaur isn’t good enough to beat Carlos Alcaraz – or Jannik Sinner for that matter – or the two best players in the world are in a class of their own. Unfortunately, both of those things are true for Australia’s top-ranked player.
De Minaur’s 7-5, 6-2, 6-1 quarterfinal defeat to Alcaraz on a hot, windy evening at the Australian Open on Tuesday was a humbling experience. The way he performed in the first four rounds suggested he was ready to become world number one. But as the evening wore on, De Minaur’s chances faded in a way everyone knows.
Shortly afterwards, as Alcaraz conducted his on-field interview with Jim Courier, De Minaur was smiling in the cool-down area, surrounded by his coaching team and mentor Lleyton Hewitt. His face was invisible, all you could see of De Minaur were his arms, stretched out to each side, palms facing upwards. The sentiment was clear. What was he supposed to do?
De Minaur has now lost all six of his matches against Alcaraz and – in an even bolder statistic – all thirteen matches against Sinner, winning just two sets against the Italian. One arrived in Beijing last September, which De Minaur said was an indication that it was getting closer. He pushed Alcaraz to a first set tiebreak when they played at the ATP Finals last year and here at Melbourne Park he came close to forcing another set in the opener. But in the final cold, cruel analysis he fell far short. By the end he looked helpless as Alcaraz laughed and joked with his team, tried new shots and enjoyed himself.
De Minaur knows he can beat everyone else. Of the rest of the world’s top 10, he has victories over all except Ben Shelton, who won their only meeting to date. But a closer look at the mutual relationships should be worrying. Of those eight players, De Minaur leads against only two; 6-5 over Taylor Fritz and 3-2 over Alexander Bublik, the current No. 9 and No. 10 respectively.
This was De Minaur’s seventh defeat in a grand slam quarter-final from seven attempts. There is no doubt that he is a great player who continues to improve every year. Nobody is faster than him. But he also lacks natural strength. He doesn’t have the serve of Nick Kyrgios and when he plays against the top two he tends to press too much. For the third time in a row against Alcaraz, his first serve percentage was below 60% (55%), leaving his second serve vulnerable. De Minaur won only 38% of the points on his second serve and even when he made the first, he won only 59%. In contrast, Alcaraz found the score on the first serve only 57% of the time, but he won 77% of the points on his first and 54% on his second.
De Minaur has no room for error, his flat groundstrokes constantly flirting with the net. The first set against Alcaraz, in which he played brilliantly, ended when his forehand caught the tape and flew wide. Alcaraz has tremendous natural strength, but when he needs to, he can hit almost as hard, with a margin of at least a foot above the net, a huge advantage. Sinner can do the same. On Tuesday, De Minaur ultimately made almost twice as many forced errors as Alcaraz.
The great thing is that De Minaur knows. “There is a big risk for me if I play with a very high ball speed. Jannik or Carlos have so much rotation on the ball that they can not only play at a higher speed but also maintain their consistency because they can get the spin that makes the ball come down and also create different angles,” he said.
Alcaraz and Sinner have shared the past eight slams and play tennis at a different level than everyone else. But Australian men’s tennis isn’t in the worst of health either. Lleyton Hewitt remains the last Australian man to win a grand slam, at Wimbledon in 2002, while Kyrgios is the only one to reach a final since 2005. By the end of 2024, Australia had nine men in the top 100; now it is only six o’clock and next Monday De Minaur will be the only one in the top 50. More worryingly, none of the 18 Australian competitors in the junior singles events here made it past the third round.
De Minaur can’t suddenly come out with a big topspin forehand, so instead he’ll continue to tweak, tinker and improve, hoping one of the top two slips somewhere and he can capitalize. For now, it remains a poor prospect.
#Alex #Minaur #fell #distance #short #Australian #Open #win #major #Simon #Cambers