Alex De Minaur 'Looking Forward' To Sinner Test After Achieving Australian Open Milestone - UBITENNIS

Alex De Minaur ‘Looking Forward’ To Sinner Test After Achieving Australian Open Milestone

Alex De Minaur is looking forward to facing Jannik Sinner as the Australian is into his maiden quarter-final in Melbourne.

By Tony Fairbairn
6 Min Read
(@atptour - Twitter)

Alex De Minaur is ‘looking forward’ to facing Jannik Sinner after he achieved another career milestone at the Australian Open.

On his eighth attempt, Alex De Minaur is finally an Australian Open quarter-finalist after the Australian number one cruised past Alex Michelsen 6-0 7-6 6-3.

It was a dominant performance from De Minaur as he finally overcame the fourth round stage and reached the quarter-finals.

Speaking after the match De Minaur admitted he was ‘super happy’ to reach the last eight and spoke about his journey over the last few years, “I’m super happy, super happy to finally breakthrough, finally get that milestone moment here at the Australian Open,” De Minaur happily said in his press conference.

“It feels like the slam that kept on slipping away where I felt like I had a little bit of a barrier at the fourth round. So it feels very good to finally break through another milestone in my career. I think I have been quite vocal about my ambitions and goals at slams. For way too long I felt like I wasn’t performing in the bigger stages in the bigger tournaments.

“Ultimately I knew that if I wanted to be a better player and if I wanted to be a top-10 player, these were the tournaments where I had to start performing a whole lot better. I have worked really hard on myself to give myself these opportunities and chances. It hasn’t been overnight.

“It’s been a long process. But I’m glad that I’m showing this consistency, and it’s a good feeling to have, yeah, four back-to-back quarterfinals at slams.”

The long process that De Minaur has spoken about especially came after some brutal injuries including last year’s one at Wimbledon.

The eighth seed said it was mentally and physically tough but is now reaping the rewards for being persistent, “I would say it was brutal, both physically and mentally. I mean, again, in a way, at some point I would love to, you know, open up fully about everything that I went through in that period, because it was a lot, but ultimately the people in my team, in my surroundings, they know how tough it was,” De Minaur explained.

“But to give you a little bit of an insight, it was just brutal from not knowing what my injury was, what my problem was, to not knowing the timeline to coming back to competing with so much pain and inhibiting my movement for so long, to mentally having to push myself every time I stepped out on court, knowing that my biggest asset, which is my movement, is not there.

“So no matter what, if I’m gonna win that match on that day, I was going to have to be so strong mentally, knowing that, you know, I had my limitations and I still had to compete from the very first point till the last. Yeah, just waiting, more than anything, waiting days and weeks for there to be no pain on my movement.

“It was a bloody long process, but I’m glad we’re here right now, yeah, and we’ve passed the page hopefully.”

De Minaur has come through the process with strength and now as a better player as he gets set for his first Australian Open quarter-final.

However, a tough test awaits De Minaur in the form of world number one and defending champion Jannik Sinner.

De Minaur is ‘looking forward’ to the challenger and spoke about the challenges of facing the Italian, “You know, the great thing about tennis is that once you step out on the court, you both start at 0-0, right? It’s a whole new day, a whole new match, and anything can happen,” the Australian previewed the clash.

“Sports is unpredictable. That’s exactly the mindset I’m going to have going into that match. I’m looking forward to it. That’s the matches I want to be playing. Ultimately, if there is anything, it’s going to be my first match this whole tournament where I’m the underdog and don’t have all the pressure and expectation of, you know, having to win. So it’s quite exciting, and I’m looking forward to that. 

“So he’s a bad matchup for a lot of players out there on tour. Looking on that, I just gotta go and look at the things that I have done well against him. I have hit with him this week, so just look at that, look back at the match I played in Rotterdam.

“For me, that one was probably, out of the last matches we have played, the only one that I can really take a lot out of, because I was physically at 100%, and I think that was quite a good battle with opportunities here and there. So I’ll take a lot from that, and, hey, we’ve never played quarterfinals of a slam. So that’s a new one.”

The bad news for De Minaur is that Sinner currently leads the head-to-head 9-0 heading into Wednesday’s showdown.

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