In the box seat: The mystery supporters eyeing de Minaur’s every move tonight

A seven-year-old Alex de Minaur walked into a tennis club.

This is not the start of a joke but rather ground zero in the most important relationship in de Minaur’s tennis life. The club, 40(15, is in Alicante, Spain, and the head coach was Adolfo Gutierrez.

Alex de Minaur’s fervent supporters in his players box at the Australian Open on Friday night.Credit: Eddie Jim

“He was just seven and was playing in the under-10s. I remember being very impressed with his talent and determination, even at that age,” Gutierrez told this masthead.

“A few months later, he was playing all the under-10 finals. When he joined my club; we had an instant connection. His talent was obvious. In a country of baseliners; he was the only kid his age who would slice, volley and love going to the net. His passion for the game was very obvious, too.”

If you haven’t heard of Gutierrez, you are not alone. He rarely speaks publicly and prefers to keep a low profile. But he is at the head of Team Demon, or, as de Minaur’s manager, Kathryn Oyeniyi nicknames them, “The Spanglish team”.

A young Alex de Minaur with coach Adolfo Gutierrez, who saw him for the first time at age seven.Credit: Courtesy of Alex de Minaur

That’s a reference to Gutierrez and strength-and-conditioning coach Emilio Poveda Pagan, who is also from Alicante and joined them in 2019. Then there’s Matt Reid, a Sydneysider who qualified for Wimbledon in 2013 and supports Gutierrez as another coach, as Peter Luczak did previously.

Oyeniyi, who has known de Minaur since he was 12 and doubles as Australia’s Davis Cup and United Cup team manager, spent about 20 weeks on the road with him last year and is rarely not by his side during Australian summers.

Also in the players’ box when she is not competing or training herself is British tennis player Katie Boulter, who is ranked 45 in the world and played Chinese hope Qinwen Zheng in the second round on Thursday.

Honorary team member Lleyton Hewitt, whom de Minaur is often likened to, has also had a profound influence.

Team Demon: Manager Kathryn Oyeniyi, Lleyton Hewitt, Adolfo Gutierrez, and Emilio Poveda Pagan. Credit: Getty Images

De Minaur even spent the fortnight before the 2017 Australian Open, where he won a match at his home grand slam for the first time, living with the Hewitts, including wife Bec and children Cruz, Mia and Ava.

Gutierrez, it seems, is comfortable with Australia’s Davis Cup captain and former world No.1 Hewitt overshadowing him at this time of year. But keeping a low profile has become tougher since his star pupil roared into the top 10.

Still, Sydney-born de Minaur, now 24, left no doubt on the impact the coach he calls “the Fonz” has had on him and his blossoming career ahead of Friday’s third-round Australian Open match against Italian qualifier Flavio Cobolli.

“Adolfo’s been like my second father, like a father figure,” de Minaur said.

“We’ve been together now for 16 years. He took me in as a young kid, to the point where my family would obviously struggle to pay him at times [but he] would do countless hours with me.

“It means the world that we’ve been able to accomplish all this together. We’ve gone from me being a little brat at eight, nine years old, to playing juniors, to playing Futures, staying in hostels, motels all around Europe, to Challengers, 250s, to now making it to 10 in the world. It’s pretty surreal.

“I could have never done it without him. I think he deserves all the credit in the world. He doesn’t like the spotlight, but he deserves it all. I do owe it all to him.”

Those emotion-charged words made it back to an appreciative Gutierrez, who speaks in his native Spanish tongue in his interactions with de Minaur.

“It’s touching, obviously. We’ve gone through a lot together, grown together and spent many hours together. At this stage, we are as close as family members can be.”

So, was de Minaur really a “brat” as a kid?

“I’m glad he can admit he was a brat,” Gutierrez said, laughing. “No, seriously, as a kid, he was any coach’s dream – polite, hardworking, talented, eager, listened well and got results.

“When we started playing ITF [events] and things became tougher; he started putting a lot more pressure on himself, and we had moments where he’d get frustrated or impatient, and I’d have to bring him back to reality.”

Adolfo Gutierrez has guided Alex de Minaur since he was eight years old.Credit: Getty Images

Another Australian tennis great, Todd Woodbridge, was pivotal in reuniting de Minaur with his birth country – but that process interrupted the future star’s working relationship with Gutierrez.

Woodbridge, who oversaw Tennis Australia’s development pathway at the time, invited de Minaur, then aged 12, and Gutierrez to the French Open as the family were figuring out how to financially move forward.

The 22-time grand slam doubles champion was suitably impressed, and soon after TA presented a formal offer to support his budding career.

The catch was that de Minaur, and his family, would need to return to Sydney to train, and that is what happened, although the world No.10 described the move as “brutal” in an interview with this masthead.

“All my relationships, all my friends – I was leaving all of that behind to go somewhere I essentially didn’t remember at all, on the other side of the world,” de Minaur said. “I remember the last day that I was at the tennis club in Alicante [and] my last training session, before leaving the next day. It brought tears to my eyes.”

The special kid Gutierrez nurtured found a whole new army of lifelong admirers in Australia, including Oyeniyi, who was working in TA’s performance department when he arrived.

The goodbye between de Minaur and Gutierrez – who still lives in Alicante with his partner and two children – was tough, but the coach told his promising charge that they would join forces again in the future.

That comment was more about consoling de Minaur than knowing for certain it would happen, but four years later the prediction came true.

“It was hard to see him leave, since we had a very close relationship, but I told him then that I was sure we’d end up together again at some stage, just to cheer him up when he had to leave,” Gutierrez said.

“I kept in touch with him and his mum [Esther] while they were in Sydney and got back together soon after his return to Spain. Our relationship was as if he had never left.“

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