Alex de Minaur received’t be beating himself up after conceding he felt powerless to cease Novak Djokovic in full flight at Melbourne Park.
A supreme Djokovic crashed de Minaur’s get together to ship the final dwelling hope packing from the Australian Open with a ruthless fourth-round show on Monday night time.
Showing no indicators of the hamstring damage that had troubled him throughout the first three rounds, Djokovic delivered a centre-court masterclass to bully de Minaur 6-2 6-1 6-2 in two hours and 6 minutes on Rod Laver Arena.
The emphatic defeat not solely abruptly ended de Minaur’s pipe dream of breaking Australia’s 47-year males’s singles title drought in Melbourne but in addition served as one other sobering grand slam actuality examine for the one-time US Open quarter-finalist.
“There’s lots of things to improve for me if I want to take the next step,” de Minaur stated.
“I want to do better than fourth round at a slam. It’s great, I’m happy, but I’m not content. I want more.
“I want to be in quarter-finals, be in the semi-finals, really go deep.
“This will add fuel to the fire. I’ll get my head down. I’ll speak to my team and work on the things I need to work on to take the next step because this is not where I want my goals to be, making fourth rounds of slams.”
While dissatisfied to not have supplied followers on RLA something to essentially cheer for, de Minaur hailed the Monday night time model of Djokovic as the perfect opponent he had ever confronted.
“Maybe I’m being very hard on myself right now, but it did seem like I played a pretty faultless Novak today,” the world No.24 stated.
“I’ll try not to take it too hard on myself because ultimately these guys, they’ve done a lot in the sport.
“If they bring their best level, you’re just slightly off your game, this is what happens.”
Try as he would possibly, the light-weight baseliner merely couldn’t compete with Djokovic’s firepower as the previous world No.1 clubbed 26 winners to 9 and broke de Minaur six instances to guide a quarter-final date on Wednesday with fifth seed Andrey Rublev.
“I cannot say I’m sorry that you haven’t watched a longer match, to be honest. I really wanted to win in straight sets,” Djokovic stated.
Moving extra freely and rising in confidence, Djokovic shall be a sizzling favorite in opposition to Russia’s Rublev as he continues his pursuit of a mind-boggling tenth Open title after heaping but extra ache on Australians on the majors.
The tremendous Serb broke Nick Kyrgios’ coronary heart in final 12 months’s Wimbledon closing and has now improved his win-loss report over Aussies on the slams – together with Lleyton Hewitt, Bernard Tomic and John Millman – to 12-1.
His lone grand slam defeat to an Australian got here in opposition to de Minaur’s mentor Hewitt greater than 16 years in the past in New York when Djokovic was nonetheless a youngster.
Despite copping his heaviest defeat in 22 grand slam appearances, de Minaur nonetheless declared his summer time a hit after matching his career-best run in Melbourne and taking down 22-times grand slam winner Rafael Nadal, the dethroned Open champion, on the United Cup in Sydney.
“I had a great match against (Adrian) Mannarino (in round two). That was a positive. Made the second week of a slam again. That’s another positive,” he stated.
“Over the Aussie summer I got a win over Rafa, which is pretty positive.
“There’s definitely positives out there.”
