The men’s tour increasingly is overrun by giants: tall, powerful specimens who crunch the ball, serve from heavenly heights, and somehow still manage to cover the court.
Australia’s Alex de Minaur is not one of those genetically gifted tennis players.
That’s not to say he doesn’t have gifts. Just that his principal weapon is different. It is his pure footspeed.
The fleet de Minaur is one of the tour’s fastest players—if not the fastest.
He is as equally adept at moving forwards and backwards as he is side to side. The 21-year-old is listed at a generous 6 feet tall and a slight 150 pounds. He is a welterweight up against heavyweights. But oh can he dance around the court.
Sure, he has some fine groundstrokes off both wings and lovely hands. He can even get considerable pop on his serve, in the high 120-mph range. But it is the Aussie’s speed and court coverage that frustrate opponents, who frequently have to hit multiple winners just to win a point.
The young Aussie hails from Sydney, but like so many Australians, is the son of recent immigrants.
His mother is from Spain and his father from Uruguay. When he was five, de Minaur moved to his mother’s homeland and took up tennis in Alicante. For years, the youngster split his time between Spain and Australia, and he still trains in Alicante.
He has yet to make his big breakthrough.
De Minaur was named ATP Newcomer of the Year in 2018, after shimmying up the tour ladder from No. 208 to No. 31 in the world, but he has yet to break through, especially at a major. De Minaur’s best result is reaching the fourth round at last year’s US Open, but he did notch a big scalp earlier this year, that of the 6-foot-6 German Alexander Zverev, whom he defeated at the ATP Cup.
The Australian has been ranked as high as No. 18 in the world, and he is seeded 21st in Flushing Meadows.
De Minaur is nicknamed “Demon.”
Presumably, this is a riff on his surname, which is pronounced “DEE-min-hour,” rather than the devil-may-care little mustache he’s been sporting of late.
But if we’re being honest, it should mean one thing only: speed demon. That would be truth in advertising.
Next up for Alex, in the third round of the 2020 US Open, is the Russian Karen Khachanov. Unsurprisingly, he is one of those giants populating the men’s tour: a strapping 6-foot-6, with a massive serve and forehand. De Minaur will need to be positively whippet-like around the court to keep up with the missiles being fired at him.
