How Demon could ‘expose’ shaky Sinner
Alex de Minaur will spend the hours before his showdown with nemesis and world No.1 Jannik Sinner preparing for “battle” undaunted by a winless record against the defending Australian Open champ and armed with lessons on how to “expose” him from previous encounters as questions emerge about the Italian’s fitness.
In nine confrontations with Sinner, de Minaur has not just lost every time, he’s won only a single set.
Progression to his first quarter-final at Melbourne Park was always going to mean, barring something extraordinary, a clash with Sinner as de Minaur tries to end a 49-year winning drought for Australian men at the Open.
Knowing that, de Minaur has paid close attention to Sinner and, armed with all the information from their previous clashes, feels like he is inching closer and closer to that breakthrough win, which might just come on Wednesday.
“There is a big part of all the matches that we have played in the past, looking at his matches from this week and what he’s done well and what he’s struggled to do,” the Australian No.1 said.
“Then you’ve got to play the match on face value and forget about everything that’s happened in the past.
“The only thing that I want to take from the past is the matches that I felt like I played well and I found different areas where I could expose them.
“Ultimately going into that, we will come up with a set game plan. Obviously, a lot depends on when we play, whether it’s day or night. That’s completely two different matches and two different ways of playing him.
“Get ready for a battle from the very first point till the last.”
There’s no hiding from de Minaur’s poor record against Sinner, but the Australian said there was a silver lining to it ahead of their clash.
“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 having to win,” he said.
“So it’s quite exciting, and I’m looking forward to that.
“And we’ve never played quarter-finals of a slam, so that’s a new one.”
Sinner came through his fourth-round match after being troubled significantly at various times, needing a long medical time-out during his match played in the heat of the day on Monday.
He was visibly shaking amid speculation he could have had pneumonia before the Open.
Having come through a “brutal” run of injuries in 2024, de Minaur is fresh and firing in Melbourne, and that could be a factor to finally sway things his way.
“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,” he said.
“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 I had my limitations and I still had to compete from the very first point till the last.
“Just waiting, more than anything, 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, and we’ve passed the page hopefully.”