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Shortly before the start of the ATP Finals in Turin, Jannik Sinner posted a photo from the golf course after playing a round with his coaching team. Sinner is one of the many top tennis players who have taken to golf as if it’s a side-hustle; Carlos Alcaraz spent his days off at Wimbledon and the US Open on the course, while Casper Ruud reportedly plays off a handicap of +2 and if anything appears more enthused by his quest to improve it than his actual profession.
Sinner, by all accounts, is not near the same level, much to the relief of the players on the tour who have grown accustomed to the Italian dominating them on the tennis court. “I think I could finally beat you at something,” came the reply under Sinner’s Instagram post from Alex de Minaur, the World No 7, who is reported to have a +10 handicap. The self deprecating humour from De Minaur referenced what is the most one-sided head-to-head among top-15 players, and the 12-0 record Sinner holds over him.
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De Minaur is without a win over Sinner in 12 attempts (Getty)
Perhaps their 13th meeting will be unlucky for the defending champion, but everything else points to that form continuing. With his victory over Ben Shelton completing an unbeaten round-robin phase at the ATP Finals, the 24-year-old Sinner has now won 29 matches in a row on indoor hard courts as well as 16 sets in a row at the year-end tournament. Both streaks date back to Sinner’s loss to Novak Djokovic in the 2023 Turin final, before the Italian was even a grand slam champion.
And yet the opportunity to face Sinner in the semi-finals is one that De Minaur thought was impossible just a few days ago. The 26-year-old stared into the abyss and admitted to being in a “dark place” after failing to close out his match against Lorenzo Musetti. “If I really want to be serious about taking the next step in my career, these matches, I can’t lose them,” he said after blowing a 5-3 lead in the third set. “It’s getting to a point where mentally it’s killing me.”
It left De Minaur without a win in his five matches at the ATP Finals and on the brink of another elimination. He assumed, incorrectly, that he was already out before facing Taylor Fritz on Thursday. But after believing there was nothing to lose, the Australian was inspired as he defeated Fritz in straight-sets, bringing an ultra-aggressive approach to break down an opponent who had pushed Carlos Alcaraz all the way two days before. “Finally”, he wrote on the court-side camera, after managing to get over the line to record his first top-10 win over the season.
After being informed that a victory for Alcaraz over Musetti would book his place in the semi-finals, De Minaur admitted that he didn’t know what to believe. “Is that actually true?” he questioned. Improbably, it was enough. “Gracias Carlos”, he wrote after Alcaraz’s straight-sets win sent him through to the final four.
De Minaur, however, also deserves credit for how he picked himself up from the floor, showing immense mental fortitude after Fritz saved the first of the match points against him. This was a victory for himself and the doubts he overcame as much as it was an achievement in reaching the semi-finals.
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De Minaur ended his losing run against top-10 opponents by beating Fritz (AFP via Getty Images)
More resilience will be required ahead of facing Sinner. De Minaur is so far without a win in his 16 career meetings with Alcaraz and Sinner. For all of De Minaur’s grit, the two best players in the world are prone to highlighting his shortcomings and exposing his lack of firepower. There have been more defeats to Sinner because of the regularity of their meetings; this will be their eighth match in two years, with all of them coming on Sinner’s hard-court stronghold, and De Minaur has won just one set.
Their Australian Open quarter-final earlier this year, where Sinner silenced the crowd in Melbourne and destroyed their home hope 6-3 6-2 6-1 in less than two hours, proved a haunting experience. Sinner has the destructive, overwhelming power to wipe an opponent like De Minaur from the court. “You feel like you just have been slapped across the face,” De Minaur said.
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Sinner destroyed De Minaur to the loss of just six games in the Australian Open quarter-finals (Getty Images)
He is far from the only player to feel like that against a certain opponent. Novak Djokovic holds a record 19-0 head-to-head against Gael Monfils, while Rafael Nadal was 18-0 against Richard Gasquet and Roger Federer was 17-0 against David Ferrer. Another win for Sinner against De Minaur would take their head-to-head closer to one of the most lop-sided records of all time, with Djokovic’s 11-0 against Fritz the closest comparison among top-15 players.
De Minaur has previously maintained that his defeats to Sinner have not revealed his ceiling, insisting he can be more competitive. He may well have started the week thinking his best chance of beating the Italian was on the golf course, rather than the tennis court. But in somehow staying alive at the ATP Finals, De Minaur has found some belief from thinking there was nothing to lose. It’s a fascinating mental quick that he needs to find again before facing the hardest challenge in the sport.
“I’m very happy for him,” Sinner said after joining De Minaur in the semi-finals. “When you have these kinds of losses, what he had against Lorenzo, it’s very tough. Props to him for coming back with such an incredible performance, one of the best matches I’ve seen him play, against Taylor. I have to be very careful because he doesn’t have a lot to lose, I have a lot to lose so, it’s going to be very difficult.”
