3 minute read
Australia's tennis No.1 is into the last eight at Wimbledon for the first time, after holding his nerves as bad memories threatened to derail him.
Alex de Minaur has admitted the memory of his 2022 Wimbledon nightmare returned to haunt him when he dropped the third set to Arthur Fils with a first quarter-final at the hallowed venue beckoning.
Two years ago the Australian No.1 choked when two sets to love up against unseeded Cristian Garin at the same fourth-round stage. He subsequently failed to close out two match points before losing a fifth-set tie-break.
An early exit last year meant he came into this year's tournament still to reach the last eight, so when Fils battled back from 2-0 down to halve the deficit on No.1 Court on Monday (Tuesday AEST) the bad memories came flooding back.
However, the 25-year-old had the maturity to keep them at bay, going on to beat Fils 6-2, 6-4, 4-6, 6-3 and book a Centre Court date with Novak Djokovic.
"Obviously a couple years back I was in a similar position, being two sets to love up," he said.
"There was a lot going through my mind. Happy I was able to finish it off in the end. It definitely wasn't easy. It definitely wasn't straightforward.
"But hey, I'm sitting here in the quarter-finals. So happy days."
It did not help that the crowd, normally supportive of the Sydneysider, wanted to get their money's worth so were backing his opponent.
"At the end of the day the crowd wants a spectacle, right?" he reasoned. "They want the match to go for as long as possible. You understand them getting involved, wanting Arthur to kind of have the comeback."
But de Minaur shut out the noise, inside his head and in his ears, and drew on his experience to secure a last-eight spot.
"I've taken a lot of the tough moments that I've gone through in my career, there's only one way to look at it, and that's learn from it.
"It's all about the little wins. My whole career has been about that, getting better every day, learning from tough experiences. I think that's the key to becoming a better tennis player."
In the short-term the improvement he wants - and needs - to see is in his serve, having been broken by Fils in four of his final six service games.
"I didn't help myself. I didn't serve well in the moments that I needed to. I wasn't landing my first serve. That's what got me into trouble more often than not.
"The way I see it is I'm winning tennis matches, right? At the end of the day it doesn't matter if it's perfect, if it's pretty, if it's ugly or what it is, right? If I win the last point and I'm shaking my opponent's hand and I have a big grin on my face, then it means I got the job done.
"Of course, as you go deeper in a tournament, you want to be playing better, you want to be executing a little bit better. That's one of the areas that I can definitely improve on."
