de Minaur building a bandwagon before Australian Open

Alex de Minaur has been the toast of the tennis town through two weeks of the season. If the 18-year-old Australian managed to make a name for himself in the span of just a pair of 250-point tournaments, what can he do at the Australian Open? There’s no telling.

From pretty much out of nowhere–nowhere being a world ranking of No. 208 and two career match victories at the ATP level–de Minaur reached the Brisbane semifinals and the Sydney final. The youngster would have been relegated to Sydney qualifying, but he beat Steve Johnson, Milos Raonic, and Michael Mmoh in Brisbane to earn a special exemption into the main draw of his next “home” tournament.

Talk about making the most of an opportunity.

de Minaur used his SE to take out Fernando Verdasco, Damir Dzumhur, Feliciano Lopez, and Benoit Paire before ultimately sucumbing to Daniil Medvedev in a dramatic three-set championship match.

Despite the 1-6, 6-4, 7-5 setback against Medvedev, de Minaur continued to impress everyone who watched. Count former world No. 1 Andy Murray among them.

The Aussie faithful, who have enjoyed watching several up-and-coming stars from their country in recent years, also love it. They were nothing short of raucous in Brisbane and Sydney, clearly rattling semifinal opponent Ryan Harrison–who made sure during his post-match interview to note how loud they were–at the former event. At the latter, Medvedev was apologetic during the trophy ceremony.

“First of all, guys, I want to say sorry,” Medvedev said after capturing his first career ATP title. “I want to congratulate Alex on an amazing run…. He’s the future of tennis.”

That is high praise for who was basically unknown going into 2018. He is still ranked outside the top 100 (127th), but it is clear that de Minaur is poised to join the list of promising Australian up-and-comers such as Nick Kyrgios and Thanasi Kokkinakis. Speaking of up-and-coming Aussies, former WTA star and Jelena Dokic chimed in following de Minaur’s Sydney run. Dokic can relate, having stunned world No. 1 Martina Hingis on her way to the 1999 Wimbledon quarterfinals as a 16-year-old.

“He’s very young; he’s only 18 so still developing and still getting better,” Dokic said. “I think it’s important not to put pressure on him. He has done well here in Australia but now it’s a bigger picture, it’s the rest of the year as well. I understand everyone’s getting very excited but I think it’s important not to put that pressure on him.”

The pressure will certainly be on his first-round Australian Open opponent on Tuesday. After all, Tomas Berdych is a heavy favorite–at least on paper (the 32-year-old Czech is 20th in the world). Dokic, for one, anticipates a competitive contest.

“I think [de Minaur] can play a great match,” Dokic said. “I’m not sure if he can win; we’ll see. There might be an upset there. He’s coming off a great two weeks. It’s about letting him play tennis now. Let’s not expect him to get into the second week of the Australia Open. He’s doing well and can only get better.”

If he is already this good and can only get better, the sky is the limit.

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