“I kind of surprised myself” – De Minaur reflects on successful Roland-Garros
Alex de Minaur is pleased with his performance at this year’s Roland-Garros, and is looking forward to the upcoming grass season
Action Plus/Panoramic
Alex de Minaur’s Roland-Garros run ended on Wednesday evening, with the Australian going down 6-4, 7-6(5), 6-4 to Alexander Zverev in the Paris quarter-finals.
Now, the 25-year-old is looking forward to spring-boarding from his surprise clay court success into the upcoming grass season.
“I’m extremely proud of my efforts throughout the two weeks,” De Minaur said on Wednesday evening following his defeat at Roland-Garros. “I’m excited for the grass, excited to let the surface help me out a little bit out there.
“We’ll see how it goes this year, because, you know, I’ve never gone so deep here in French, so hopefully that takes a lot of momentum and confidence on to the grass.”
De Minaur developing his all-surface game
World No 11 De Minaur making it to the quarter-finals was perhaps the biggest surprise of this year’s Roland-Garros. The Australian is typically a hard-court player, but he found great success on the Parisian clay these past 10 days.
On Wednesday, however, the conditions were a bridge too far for De Minaur.
“You know, sometimes on this surface days like today, conditions like today, I just struggle a little bit more,” he explained.
“Zverev loves slow conditions,” the Aussie continued. “I think it’s no secret. His best surface is the clay. You put that plus a night match, obviously someone like myself it’s a little bit harder to penetrate and hurt him out there.
“Still, I thought we came up with a good game plan. I was executing quite well. First set, a couple points here and there decided it. Second set, had a set point. I thought I played well.”
De Minaur reflected that his performance at the year’s second Grand Slam has given him confidence heading into the Olympics, which will be held here in two months’ time.
“In a way I kind of surprised myself too,” he confessed. “I showed that I’m perfectly capable. Again, Olympics will be best-of-three. It kind of shows that, yeah, there’s no reason why I can’t put on a good showing and perform and win matches.”
