Australian Open 2025: The match that gives Alex de Minaur hope against Jannik Sinner

Alex de Minaur hasn’t won a set, let alone a match, against Jannik Sinner for five years. And the finer details of one defeat is filling him with optimism.

Alex de Minaur celebrates winning match point against Alex Michelsen in the fourth round. Picture: Getty Images

Alex de Minaur has beaten Jannik Sinner. Let the record show he was an emphatic victor at the Paris Masters. De Minaur never looked like losing. He didn’t have a hair out of place, sweeping Sinner aside like the Italian didn’t exist. It was the most impressive forfeit of de Minaur’s longish and increasingly decorated career.

Of the nine actual matches he’s lost to the world No.1, one puts throbbing hope in his heart. De Minaur pushed Sinner to the brink in the final of last year’s Rotterdam Open. It was one of the few times they’ve met when de Minaur was fully fit and firing. At 4-5 in the first set, he broke serve with a hell-for-leather point that left Sinner flat on his back, shaking his head. De Minaur didn’t win it, losing
7-5, 6-4, but he was up to his neck in it.

“Jannik is a hell of a player, right?” he says ahead of Wednesday night’s Australian Open quarter-final.

Right. “It’s not really about being a bad matchup. It’s that he’s a pretty good player, right?” de Minaur says.

Right. “He’s a bad matchup for a lot of players out there on tour,” de Minaur continues. “Looking on that, I’ve just got to go and look at the things I’ve done well against him in the past. I’ve hit with him this week, so I’m looking at that, and looking back at the match I played in Rotterdam – for me, out of the matches we’ve played, that one was probably the only one that I can really take a lot out of because I was physically at 100 per cent. I think that was quite a good battle with opportunities here and there. I’ll take a lot from that and hey, we’ve never played quarterfinals of a slam. So that’s a new one.”

Jannick Sinner and de Minaur in Rotterdam last year Picture: Getty Images

Sinner will wail away on Wednesday evening with flashing groundstrokes while de Minaur scampers around in retrieval, waiting for moments to attack. His best moments at Rotterdam came when he pulled the trigger on a flat groundstroke and charged the net. He hit more drop shots and drop volleys than usual. The challenge for de Minaur is picking the right moment to reach for the trigger. There’s no point pushing forward unless it’s behind something good.

Wham, bam, Amsterdam – their Rotterdam clash was before de Minaur’s season was complicated by his hip injury at Wimbledon. We’re yet to know the full extent. Sinner’s twin and emphatic 6-3, 6-4 wins over de Minaur late last year, at the ATP Finals and Davis Cup finals, came when the Australian was badly affected by hip troubles.

“I would say it was brutal, both physically and mentally,” de Minaur says of last season’s injury. “At some point I would love to 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. 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 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, was not there.”

It was remarkable, borderline miraculous, when de Minaur hobbled into the US Open quarterfinals. “No matter what, if I was going to win a match on any given 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,” he says. “It was just waiting, more than anything, waiting days and weeks for there to be no pain in my movement. It was a bloody long process but I’m glad we’re here right now. We’ve passed the page, hopefully.”

Top seed Sinner signs autographs for fans following his victory in the fourth round Picture: AFP

Folks are going gaga about de Minaur’s more powerful serve. He’s clocking 215km/h when he used to serve more regularly in a school zone. And yet there’s a downside to the increased velocity. His all-important first serve percentage has plummeted. Of his 90 first serves against Alex Michelsen, he missed 52. He won’t get away with serving at 42 per cent against Sinner.

“Last couple of matches, those serves just decided to go away on a little vacay,” he says. “Kind of deserted me for a little while. These numbers are not something I want day in and day out. It’s great to get through matches and you live to fight another day but ultimately you still – in the first couple of rounds, when I was serving at the same pace, I was at 60 per cent. Anywhere around that is definitely good serving numbers for me. I do have that extra pop on my serve where I can get, you know, that 215km/h, for example, but it doesn’t mean I’ve got to use it all the time. It’s about using variety and setting up the next shot and keeping your opponent guessing about whether you’re going to go for the big one down the T or you’re going to take a little bit of pace off and go for the short slider. Go somewhere in the body, just keep that variety going. I’m sure my serve will come back.”

Lleyton Hewitt is constantly in de Minaur’s corner Picture: Getty Images

Forever by de Minaur’s side is Lleyton Hewitt, the last Australian male to reach the final. “He’s been my Davis Cup captain for a while now and I’ve learned a lot through him,” de Minaur says. “I’ve picked his brain many, many times. One of my biggest goals the last couple of years was to perform at the slams and more than anything, his advice has always been that the first week of a slam is there to find a way and get through. You start playing with confidence, you’ve played four matches already, feeling the conditions, the balls, the atmosphere, and then you’re not that far off from the big title. Doesn’t matter how you do it, whether it’s pretty or ugly, you’ve just got to find a way to get yourself to the second week. Because in the second week of a slam … anything can happen.”