For some teams, the journey to Australia to play at United Cup is a long one. But for Alex de Minaur, Maya Joint, Maddison Inglis, Storm Hunter, Jason Kubler and John-Patrick Smith, who all represent Team Australia, playing on home soil is a familiar and welcome breath of fresh air.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This especially can be said for Australia\u2019s leading player De Minaur, the world No.7 who honed his game playing on courts outside Ken Rosewall Arena.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cGrowing up I was at the academy here,\u201d said the Sydneysider. \u201cI grew up here; I was here while the tournament was being played \u2026 all I wanted as a kid was to compete on that court.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s basically a pinch-me moment every time I walk out there. I get goosebumps and the crowd support is unbelievable.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
De Minaur is not the only member of the Australia squad who is well acquainted with the venue, as John-Patrick Smith also has ties to the Sydney arena.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe venue I actually played [at] \u2013 like Demon (De Minaur) did \u2013 I played juniors here a lot,\u201d said the doubles world No.41. \u201cTo be able to represent my country \u2026 it\u2019s something I always dreamed about.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to team captain, Australian tennis legend and former world No.1 Lleyton Hewitt: \u201cEveryone\u2019s really excited, we\u2019ve got a great team here [and] a really good team culture and camaraderie around the guys.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cLooking forward to going out there and obviously these guys get to play on home soil \u2026 against such quality teams and players is something pretty special that they don\u2019t get to do every week.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The country\u2019s top woman, world No.32 Maya Joint, was absent during the press conference due to illness, yet Hewitt was confident she would make a speedy recovery.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully she can bounce back tomorrow,\u201d he said. \u201cConfidence-wise, I don\u2019t think myself or her team are too worried about how she\u2019s hitting the balls and moving or playing at the moment.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Anticipation is building ahead of tomorrow\u2019s first battle against Team Norway, with De Minaur going up against United Cup veteran Casper Ruud.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got a bloody tough match tomorrow night,\u201d said Hewitt. \u201cThey\u2019re led by their male player Casper Rudd and it\u2019s going to be a hell of a match between him and Alex, which I\u2019m really looking forward to seeing.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
For De Minaur, his determination to take Team Australia onwards to the finals is accompanied by genuine excitement to be playing back at his old stomping ground.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cPlaying here in Sydney, I don\u2019t get to do that often enough,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s always a special feeling coming back and playing here.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For some teams, the journey to Australia to play at United Cup is a long one. But for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":386356,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[18278,64,63,72820,85,747,148639],"class_list":{"0":"post-386355","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-alex-de-minaur","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-news-article","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-tennis","14":"tag-united-cup"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386355","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=386355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386355\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/386356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}