{"id":140564,"date":"2025-09-13T08:22:12","date_gmt":"2025-09-13T08:22:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/140564\/"},"modified":"2025-09-13T08:22:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T08:22:12","slug":"australia-on-the-ropes-as-alex-de-minaur-stunned-by-brave-belgian-collignon-davis-cup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/140564\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia on the ropes as Alex de Minaur stunned by brave Belgian Collignon | Davis Cup"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tennis officials have been branded \u201cbarbaric\u201d as Alex de Minaur<\/a> suffered a shock loss in a dramatic start to Australia\u2019s second-round Davis Cup qualifying tie in Sydney.<\/p>\n

Lowly ranked Raphael Collignon overcame severe cramping to upset De Minaur 7-5 3-6 6-3 in a three-hour, 12-minute epic at Ken Rosewall Arena on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Two-time Cup-winning great Todd Woodbridge was furious officials didn\u2019t call for a physio to treat Collignon when he was writhing in agony on the court midway through the opening game of the deciding set.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is ridiculous,\u201d Woodbridge said in commentary for the Nine Network. \u201cThis is so, so cruel. Get the physio out there now. This is more important [than the result]. This is a health issue now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both the tournament doctor and referee came to the court to assist the 23-year-old, but Woodbridge said that was \u201cnot enough\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve just sent a couple of messages just trying to clarify what the ruling is here because I thought the understanding was that we got rid of the barbaric look of what we\u2019ve just seen,\u201d the doubles legend said.<\/p>\n

Not allowed a medical time-out because cramping is deemed to be the result of a \u201clack of conditioning\u201d, Collignon took his cap off and appeared to be walking to the umpire\u2019s chair to shake hands during that first game of the third set.<\/p>\n

But the world No 91 changed his mind, played on and heroically battled to the biggest win of his career.<\/p>\n

Playing for his country and riding high two weeks after taking down dual grand slam finalist and world No 12 Casper Ruud at the US Open, it was understandable why Collignon did not wish to surrender.<\/p>\n

He came out blazing from the get-go, refusing to be intimidated by Australia\u2019s world No 8.<\/p>\n

After being broken to fall behind 6-5, de Minaur fended off four set points but not a fifth in an epic 12th game as Collignon took the marathon first set in 86 minutes.<\/p>\n

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Facing the grim prospect of leaving Australia trailing 1-0 in the best-of-five-match tie before Jordan Thompson took on the higher-ranked Zizou Bergs in the second singles rubber, de Minaur raised his game in the second set.<\/p>\n

He charged to a 5-1 lead, only for Collignon to somehow muster another break as the cramping began to take hold.<\/p>\n

But the home-city favourite was unable to shake his dogged opponent, with the underdog digging deep to give Belgium a 1-0 lead in the tie.<\/p>\n

Thompson must beat Bergs to avoid Australia needing to win both of Sunday\u2019s reverse singles matches and the doubles to advance to this year\u2019s quarter-finals in Italy in November.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tennis officials have been branded \u201cbarbaric\u201d as Alex de Minaur suffered a shock loss in a dramatic start…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140565,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":{"0":"post-140564","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140564\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}