The five-time major quarterfinalist Alex de Minaur emphatically started this year’s Australian Open, losing only 1 set(out of 16 sets) in his third-round match against Argentinian Francisco Cerundolo. However, in the QF, the Demon met the current world No. 1 Jannik Sinner. The Australian player suffered a decisive three-set defeat (6-3, 6-2, 6-1), dashing local hopes for a singles champion since Mark Edmondson’ triumph in 1976. And, as the match ended, criticism flowed across social media, including X where Pavvy G made some uninspiring remarks. 

“Alex De Minaur has zero self belief that he can even compete with Sinner let alone beat him. Awful performance from him,” he quoted on his X handle. He even added lame comments in his X, targeting the Demon as he quotes, “Alex de Minaur performance is one of the worst ever performances that I’ve seen from a Top 10 player in a Grand Slam. Sinner is playing decent but not spectacular and is making errors but Alex seems to have frozen in front of his home crowd and can’t even rally with Sinner.”. However, just after the rally of tweets, the former American professional Andy Roddick came in support of the Australian as he added his views over the

In his ‘Served with Andy Roddick’ podcast on Wednesday, the American said, “I wanna start this podcast because you see a lot of people in the commentary and comments, its like disparaging in a act like it’s easy, for Sinner or that like demon you know its, I don’t know it takes a lot side of laws like people become apparently a lot better at what they do right? Like demon eight in the world in a global sport. You know some chuckers say this guy stings like get outta here. You gotta be really better in your job if you’re criticising your like Alex de Minaur,” he added. Also, he further made a comparison between Demon and Perricard to support the Aussie. 

“The guy maxes out every bit that he has. Can he serve like 140? Is he 6’8 like Mpetshi Perricard? No. Is he really fast? Yes! Can he create lots of spin in both sides? No! I was someone if you could pick me 100 dollars right now, I could have do 100 spin on the back hand. I can relate, I get it. But then you add that your layer in someone who is such a good fighter, athlete, is really smart. But then you take what demon does well, moving in and out of the quarters, asking the questions over and over again, not giving unforced errors, and then you add in a version of him that can serve big, spread the court hit it 30 or 40 percent harder on average and create spin and then you have the match up against Sinner and demon,” he added further.

Even Alex doesn’t hold himself from answering to one of the tweets of Pavvy G. “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!!!” Alex replied to Pavvy G. 

As the Aussie crashed out of the ongoing AO, his opponent Sinner will now face the America’s Ben Shelton in SF at the Rod Laver Arena tomorrow. However, Alex admitted the difficulty of disrupting his opponent’s game.

Alex de Minaur shared his remarks on the tough draw

Instead of leaving Australian Open with an impressive achievement, making four straight QF – something only 4 other Aussies had done before, an underwhelming performance against the stoic Italian didn’t come in handy at all for Alex de Minaur. Do you know another ruthless statistic about this win of Sinner? The Italian has now made a 10-0 head-to-head record against the Demon with only ‘one’ set loss! It’s like a ‘Slap across the face’! After the match, the Aussie also came up with his honest opinion.

“I’ll survive. I’ll keep improving. And if anything, I just need to sit with my team and figure out a way to hurt Jannik on the court. That’s ultimately the way we’ve got to look at it and find different ways, because at the moment we don’t have it. So back to the drawing board, like I’ve done my whole career. I still don’t think this is my ceiling. I still think I’ve got more in the tank. So I’ll be searching for that,” he began.

Alex de Minaur also made his remarks about the Melbourne weather and how the draw became tough for him. “You try everything. You bring every sort of different look that you can. But in these types of conditions where it’s a little bit colder and you can’t really get the ball out of his strike zone, he can just unload and not miss. It’s tough. I think if we’re playing middle of the day on a stupidly hot day, then that’s when you can see some errors come out, and that’s when you probably see Jannik not play at his best. But conditions like today, it’s tough to rattle him at all,” he added. 

Alex now ended his AO tour this year as the highest-ranked Australian in either singles draw. However, he surely needs to consider major changes in his game to get excellent results against the best in the business in the upcoming Grand Slams of the season.