{"id":375706,"date":"2025-12-28T09:09:17","date_gmt":"2025-12-28T09:09:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/375706\/"},"modified":"2025-12-28T09:09:17","modified_gmt":"2025-12-28T09:09:17","slug":"alex-de-minaur-sets-sights-on-carlos-alcaraz-and-jannik-sinner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/375706\/","title":{"rendered":"Alex De Minaur sets sights on Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cThere\u2019s no other way than just getting better, right? That\u2019s what it is. You ultimately have to bridge that gap &#8230; I\u2019ve played some very close matches over the years with both of them, and you feel like you\u2019re getting closer and closer, and that\u2019s what it is \u2013 you\u2019ve got to work on your game, find new weapons.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For de Minaur, it means getting inventive. Having never won a match against Alcaraz or Sinner from a combined 18 attempts, something has to change.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Alex de Minaur talks to the media on Sunday.\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/2247046cc9532d7c666bc84175eb594590c0a5bc.jpeg\" height=\"390\" width=\"584\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Alex de Minaur talks to the media on Sunday.Credit: Oscar Colman<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor me, it\u2019s finding different ways to hurt these players \u2013 trying to be ready to take more risks and be a little bit more of a disruptor,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo it\u2019s kind of a couple more things here and there that we\u2019ve tried to work towards in my team throughout this off-season to kind of try to take that next step because that\u2019s obviously the next goal.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Part of that is packing on more muscle, and de Minaur has brought in a new fitness trainer to help make it happen.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUltimately, trying to get bigger and stronger and just keep on improving,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Alex de Minaur and Rinky Hijikata share a moment at the net following a practice session in Sydney.\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/c0eb85dd399d652b92e65902287ed15ecaec0613.jpeg\" height=\"390\" width=\"584\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Alex de Minaur and Rinky Hijikata share a moment at the net following a practice session in Sydney.Credit: Oscar Colman<\/p>\n<p>Despite being a little tired and jet-lagged, de Minaur was in good spirits on Sunday.<\/p>\n<p>But six weeks earlier, at the ATP Finals in November, he was at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theage.com.au\/link\/follow-20170101-p5nfg1\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">his most vulnerable following a loss to Italian Lorenzo Musetti<\/a>, which he described as \u201cone of the toughest days of my career\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Two days later, the Australian bounced back with a win against Taylor Fritz, but conceded he \u201chated the sport\u201d at that moment. Speaking of that time on Sunday, he said he was glad he could be honest with himself.<\/p>\n<p>Loading<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA lot of the time I feel like us players put on a brave face, and that\u2019s what we try to do most of the time, and sometimes certain matches they just hit differently,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was a way of me to just express my feelings, kind of get it out there, give myself a chance to regroup and, obviously, I was very pumped with the way I bounced back for my next match.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI learnt about myself in those finals &#8230; I learnt from my mistakes, how I felt after the match, I made sure for the next match I wasn\u2019t going to feel the same way and, ultimately, it\u2019s about kind of that shift in mindset.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThere\u2019s no other way than just getting better, right? That\u2019s what it is. You ultimately have to bridge&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":375707,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-375706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=375706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/375707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=375706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=375706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=375706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}