De Minaur says recovery from Wimbledon injury made him stronger: “Mentally, that gives me a bit of an edge”
The Australian pulled out before his quarter-final with Novak Djokovic but goes into 2025 with renewed belief
Alex de Minaur (Chryslene Caillaud/Panoramic)
If what doesn’t kill you really makes you stronger, then Alex de Minaur will go into 2025 more confident than ever before.
The Australian enjoyed a stellar year, reaching his first Grand Slam quarter-final at Roland-Garros, backing it up by reaching the last eight at Wimbledon and then matching that achievement by making the quarters at the US Open. He won two titles, finished the year ranked No 9 and his career continues on an upward path.
It could have been even better, had he not suffered a nasty hip injury at Wimbledon, right at the end of his fourth-round win, forcing him to pull out before his quarter-final against Novak Djokovic, who was only just recovering from knee surgery himself. At the time, it felt like a missed opportunity but looking back now, the Aussie is delighted with how he recovered to end the year on a high.
“I’m extremely proud of my efforts,” he told Tennis Majors on the eve of the UTS Grand Final, being held in London’s Copper Box over the weekend. “There’s probably two ways, or even three ways,I could look at my season; one, I could feel a little sorry for myself because of getting injured, essentially in the In the peak of my my career, at (No) 6, missing out on quarter-finals of Wimbledon.
“At the same time the year could have been a lot worse, because after that injury, I could have just not found a way to get back competing. So the way I’m seeing is that I’m incredibly proud of my efforts to come back, still compete, still salvage a great year, reach goals that were there at the start of the season, and even though I did it with a fair bit of pain. I was able to compete at basically the highest level.”
“I knew I was in trouble the moment I did it”
The instant he suffered the injury at Wimbledon, De Minaur knew it was a serious.
“I knew for sure that I was, I was in trouble the moment I did it,” he said. “Got lucky to play two more points and finish the match but I’m not too sure if I would have been able to serve it out. At that stage, I didn’t know the extent of it. At that stage, it was a three week injury – it was obviously tough pulling out of Wimbledon, but I had the rest of the year to look forward to, I had the Olympics to look forward to – but it was far from a three week injury. It was way more severe one, which completely changed my year, made me have to make very tough decisions, whether to keep on playing push throughout, what my priorities were, what my risks were, everything. So it was a tough moment.”
“I learned i can beat a lot of players not being at my absolute peak”
Somehow De Minaur managed to fight his way through to the quarter-finals at the US Open, eventually losing to Jack Draper, and he goes into 2025 with his belief further boosted by his mental efforts.
“It was very tough,” he said. “I had to do my best to block the pain out knowing what I was capable of doing, which wasn’t 100 percent but at the same time competing for every point and finding ways to win matches with what I had was able to do mentally. It’s one of the proudest things that that I’ve done in my career, to finish off the year.
“Everything you live, every experience, helps you, ultimately, it makes you learn so many different things about yourself,” he said. “This year, I learned that exactly that I can beat a lot of players not being at the absolute peak of my abilities and mentally, that that gives me a bit of an edge, which hopefully I can exploit coming into next year, and with all this to be completely fit and be able to kind of, in a way, finish the unfinished business of this year.
“I’m very close to it (pain free). I’ll say this, I’m sure in Australia, I’ll be pain free and I’ll be able to move at 150 percent.”
