Tennis blogger Pavvy G hits back at Alex de Minaur ‘hypocrisy’ amid late night tweet storm

The tennis blogger who was slammed in a late night tweet by Alex de Minaur after the Aussie was thrashed at the Australian Open has hit back.

Tennis blogger Pavvy G has called out the “hypocrisy” of the reaction to Alex de Minaur’s viral swipe after he was knocked out of the Australian Open in a 6-3 6-2 6-1 demolition at the hands of world No. 1 Jannik Sinner.

De Minaur made the quarter-finals of his home grand slam for the first time in his career on Wednesday night but was no match for a rampaging Sinner.

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Sinner had battled shaking in his fourth round win over Holger Rune in the Melbourne heat earlier in the week and, in the lead up to his round of 8 clash with de Minaur, reports he was suffering pneumonia.

But if he was still feeling under the weather, the Italian defending champion wasn’t showing it as he crushed de Minaur in less than two hours to cruise into the semi-finals.

De Minaur was devastated after the result and vowed to continue to improve to get closer to snapping his horror record against Sinner.

And the popular tennis social media user, whose name is Pav Gill, said what a lot of people were thinking.

“Alex de Minaur has zero self belief that he can even compete with Sinner let alone beat him. Awful performance from him,” Gill’s tweet read.

Sinner holds a 10-0 record against the Australian, including beating him twice in the Davis Cup Finals, three deciders in ATP tournaments and the 2022 Australian Open in the round of 16.

In all of those matches, the Australian has only managed to take a single, solitary set off the red-headed Italian.

Just under two hours later, de Minaur replied to Gill: “Hey mate it’s a shame that you never became a good enough player to experience playing Jannik. I’m sure you would’ve put up a better performance and know exactly how to beat him. Wishing you all the best!!!”

De Minaur had plenty of supporters come to his defence, including some who declared “game, set and match Alex”, clearly not understanding the irony compared to what had happened earlier.

Gill took to his own social media in reply via a nearly 11-minute video.

He claimed much of tennis media is “left-leaning” and that some had been “brainwashed and follow establishment opinions”.

“As a blogger, I’m someone who’s watched thousands of games, both live and on TV,” he began, adding he’d run the Rolls Royce Tennis Club in Derby for the last 10 years, where he is currently the club secretary.

“During that time in 20-30 years that I’ve been doing it, I’ve accumulated quite a lot of knowledge.

“So the premise that Alex de Minaur is coming back to a fan … is almost alluding that no one can comment on his performance unless you’ve been at that level, which is bizarre because you look at all the top players and they all have coaches and none of their coaches are better than them — some of them haven’t even played tennis before.

“Even Ronaldo and Messi in football, they still get taught by managers and coaches. Some of these (managers) have never even played football at any sort of level.”

Gill acknowledged that de Minaur had a right to say he didn’t agree with him, but pointed out some moments in the Aussie’s press conference.

De Minaur thanks the Aussie crowd after his crushing loss. Photo by Clive Brunskill/Getty Images

De Minaur described facing Sinner as “surreal” and at least know he’s not the only one struggling against the current king of the men’s game.

“Yeah, I mean, he’s built this aura up from beating everyone,” the Aussie said.

“Like, that’s the thing about it, right? It’s not like he’s just had a good week here or good week there. He’s just beaten everyone.

“I think the best way to describe it is the fact that he was able to, I don’t know if it was last year or two years ago, play Novak here and play pretty flawless, and, again, give him not too many games, right? Novak out here is probably the best player to have ever played on these courts, right?

“The fact that he’s got this top level that he can do this to players, it’s pretty tough. You know it’s going to be a battle, it’s going to be tough, you’re going to try different things.

“But then you’re an hour and 30 in and you’re struggling to win games and you’re trying to find ways to get on the board.

“It’s pretty surreal.”

It was last year’s Australian Open that Sinner beat Djokovic in the semi-final, with the Italian winning 6-1 6-2 6-7 6-3.

Gill, who is a huge fan of Djokovic, said “It was bizarre because he is almost saying he expected to lose.”

Gill pointed out that Aussie qualifier Tristan Schoolkate took a set off Sinner in their round two clash, as did 13th seed Rune in the fourth round.

“Jannik Sinner had more than 20 unforced errors in this match, he wasn’t at his very best by any means,” Gill said. “He played very, very well but he wasn’t at his very best by any stretch.

“What’s really grating on Alex de Minaur is that he knows this was a full house. All of Australia has been talking about this match as the Australian No. 1.

“Alex de Minaur is a top 10 player against Jannik Sinner. Ticket prices, three, four, five hundred dollars — they’re not cheap.

“People weren’t necessarily expecting an upset but they were expecting some fight, some courage, some determination and for the match to be competitive. And Alex de Minaur unfortunately didn’t show any of that.”

He added that he “didn’t see what the big issue was me tweeting that”.

Gill said the issue with the backlash against him was “a deflection of a really bad performance and really letting the fans down”.

De Minaur had no answers. Picture: Mark Stewart

Pav Gill AKA Pavvy G has responded to de Minaur's swipe. Photo: X

It was de Minaur’s best ever performance at an Australian Open and ensured he has now reached the quarters of every grand slam tournament in the last year.

Gill pointed out that de Minaur’s 2023 exit from the Australian Open at the hands of Djokovic was even more lopsided at 6-2 6-1 6-2.

And the 24-time grand slam champion also hit out at de Minaur, blasting the Aussie over his comments during Djokovic’s deportation saga.

While praising Djokovic as “an incredible athlete”, De Minaur said Djokovic had “taken a lot of spotlight away from us competitors”.

“Look, Australians have gone through a lot. There’s no secret about that. They’ve had it very tough. They’ve done a lot of work to protect themselves and their borders,” he said.

“When you’re coming in, as well as every other tennis player, if you wanted to come to the country, you had to be double vaccinated. It was up to him, his choices, his judgment. Here we are.”

Asked why he beat de Minaur so convincingly in front of his home crowd, a cold-blooded Djokovic responded: “Because I wanted to.”

Gill questioned if de Minaur had frozen on the big stage or has the self-belief to take such a big scalp, the fact he had just a 50 per cent first serve percentage spoke volumes.

Gill added: “I very much stand by my comments, it was a very good performance (from Sinner) but the hypocrisy is very important.”

Next year’s Open will be the 50th anniversary of the last Aussie men’s champion at the Australian Open. Photo by Yuichi YAMAZAKI / AFP

He pointed out the Djokovic injury drama after his epic against Carlos Alcaraz overshadowing an amazing match where he was accused of faking an injury to change the momentum in the match, while he “was expecting a good match” from de Minaur against Sinner.

“I haven’t got a problem with Alex de Minaur,” Gill added, saying he’d be happy to talk to the Aussie if he sees him at events.

“I wasn’t calling him names or telling him to go back to his own country like Tony Jones did to Djokovic and his fans, I was basically just very disappointed in his performance.

“If he took offence to that, then he can do, but then his press conference later is a little contradictory because he’s almost replicated what I’ve said in that he didn’t feel like he had any chance against Jannik Sinner.

“If anything I had belief in Alex de Minaur because I think he is a fantastic player. I think he’s improved massively in the past two or three years and I really thought he had the weapons to put it on Jannik Sinner but it just didn’t materialise this year.”

Originally published as Tennis blogger Pavvy G hits back at Alex de Minaur ‘hypocrisy’ amid late night tweet storm