Alex de Minaur won’t be beating himself up after conceding he felt powerless to stop Novak Djokovic in full flight at Melbourne Park.
A supreme Djokovic crashed de Minaur’s party to send the last home hope packing from the Australian Open with a ruthless fourth-round display on Monday night.
Showing no signs of the hamstring injury that had troubled him during the first three rounds, Djokovic delivered a centre-court masterclass to bully de Minaur 6-2 6-1 6-2 in two hours and six minutes on Rod Laver Arena.
The emphatic defeat not only abruptly ended de Minaur’s pipe dream of breaking Australia’s 47-year men’s singles title drought in Melbourne but also served as another sobering grand slam reality check for the one-time US Open quarter-finalist.
“There’s lots of things to improve for me if I want to take the next step,” de Minaur said.
“I want to do better than fourth round at a slam. It’s great, I’m happy, but I’m not content. I want more.
“I want to be in quarter-finals, be in the semi-finals, really go deep.
“This will add fuel to the fire. I’ll get my head down. I’ll speak to my team and work on the things I need to work on to take the next step because this is not where I want my goals to be, making fourth rounds of slams.”
While disappointed not to have offered fans on RLA anything to really cheer for, de Minaur hailed the Monday night version of Djokovic as the best opponent he had ever faced.
“Maybe I’m being very hard on myself right now, but it did seem like I played a pretty faultless Novak today,” the world No.24 said.
“I’ll try not to take it too hard on myself because ultimately these guys, they’ve done a lot in the sport.
“If they bring their best level, you’re just slightly off your game, this is what happens.”
Try as he might, the lightweight baseliner simply could not compete with Djokovic’s firepower as the former world No.1 clubbed 26 winners to nine and broke de Minaur six times to book a quarter-final date on Wednesday with fifth seed Andrey Rublev.
“I cannot say I’m sorry that you haven’t watched a longer match, to be honest. I really wanted to win in straight sets,” Djokovic said.
Moving more freely and growing in confidence, Djokovic will be a hot favourite against Russia’s Rublev as he continues his pursuit of a mind-boggling 10th Open title after heaping yet more pain on Australians at the majors.
The super Serb broke Nick Kyrgios’ heart in last year’s Wimbledon final and has now improved his win-loss record over Aussies at the slams – including Lleyton Hewitt, Bernard Tomic and John Millman – to 12-1.
His lone grand slam defeat to an Australian came against de Minaur’s mentor Hewitt more than 16 years ago in New York when Djokovic was still a teenager.
Despite copping his heaviest defeat in 22 grand slam appearances, de Minaur still declared his summer a success after matching his career-best run in Melbourne and taking down 22-times grand slam winner Rafael Nadal, the dethroned Open champion, at the United Cup in Sydney.
“I had a great match against (Adrian) Mannarino (in round two). That was a positive. Made the second week of a slam again. That’s another positive,” he said.
“Over the Aussie summer I got a win over Rafa, which is pretty positive.
“There’s definitely positives out there.”
© AAP 2023
