The 26-year-old has opted to sit out of Australia’s first round tie away to Ecuador during February 6-8 to manage his workload. <\/p>\n
De Minaur<\/a> has been a mainstay of the Australia<\/a> Davis Cup team since his maiden appearance in 2018, with only three players (Hewitt<\/a>, Todd Woodbridge<\/a> and 1930s-40s player Adrian Quist) participating in more career ties than his 24.\u00a0<\/p>\n His loyalty to the Davis Cup side can’t be questioned, with a proud tattoo of his player number (109) on his chest as a leading example, but past instances of playing the international tournament without full fitness came into his mind during what was reportedly weeks of discussions with non-playing team captain Lleyton Hewitt.<\/p>\n De Minaur has battled hip injuries throughout the last two years and, with the first round tie set to take place in South America just five days after the men’s Australian Open final, he has wisely opted not to risk aggravating his chronic condition by adding an around-the-world trip and at least another two matches on clay to his already busy schedule.<\/p>\n Now up to number six in the world rankings after reaching the semi-finals of the ATP Finals in Turin last year, De Minaur will be expecting to go deep into the Australian Open the week before, with his 2025 quarter-finals appearance the only time he has reached the final eight.<\/p>\n “I’ve decided that with the issues that my body has given me throughout the last year, it was smartest to just sit this one out,” De Minaur said at the United Cup in Perth, where on Tuesday he defeated Czech Republic<\/a>‘s Jakub Men\u0161\u00edk<\/a> 6-4 6-1.\u00a0<\/p>\n “I’m definitely going to be available for the next one and I’ll be cheering on the boys and super excited for that.”<\/p>\n Hewitt unequivocally backed the decision of his star player.<\/p>\n “Considering the time of the year – where it is, the conditions, the surface, so many variables – it’s really been about working with Alex to not put him in a position like he was a year and a half ago, where he had to play injured for nine months,” Hewitt clarified on Tuesday.<\/p>\n “When the draw came out, it was extremely tough … With the big picture in mind, we’ve come up with a plan that we think is best for him moving forward.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 26-year-old has opted to sit out of Australia’s first round tie away to Ecuador during February 6-8…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":393754,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-393753","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=393753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393753\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/393754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=393753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=393753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=393753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}