Alex de Minaur lets rip against coach telling him ‘you should f****** come on court and try it’
Alex de Minaur is the latest top seed to lose early at the Canadian Open as the world No 7 wasted a match point before he was sent packing by Cameron Norrie.
With Jannik Sinner, Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic not entering this year’s event in Montreal, the draw opened up further when second seed Felix Auger-Aliassime withdrew before his opening match.
Top seed Alexander Zverev then lost in the second round along with Daniil Medvedev, Flavio Cobolli, Taylor Fritz and Andrey Rublev.
Third seed De Minaur and defending champion Ben Shelton (seeded fifth) were the highest-ranked players left in the draw until the Australian suffered a massive collapse against the British No 2, losing 7-5, 6-7 (5-7), 1-6.
But despite winning the opening set, De Minaur to deal with his opponent’s crafty, loopy shots and his coach told him “all he [Norrie] is doing is spinning [the] forehand high and loopy”.
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The reply for the player was brutal as he retored: “Then you should f****** come on court and try it.”
That exchange happened at 4-2 with Norrie a break up and the advice seemed to work as De Minaur broke back and claimed a second break in game 11 before serving it out.
He then raced into a 5-2 lead in the second set courtesy to breaks and came out to serve for the match. The Australian eked out a match point, but Norrie saved it and broke to keep the match alive.
A second break put in game 10 put him level on serve and he then edged the tie-breaker before running away with things in the decider.
“It was just an awful third set for me. I had chances early, some break points,” De Minaur lamented after the match. “I had some love-30s. I had a 0-40. Just couldn’t execute. And, yeah, definitely wasn’t my best set of tennis.”
As for missing an opportunity with so many top players out, he stated: “Think it was a missed opportunity because I was up today, and I had — obviously I was in a good position, and I had match point to finish off the match. But apart from that, I think, yeah, I wasn’t paying too much attention to that.
“It’s tennis. As we’ve seen, anything can happen. It’s not the easiest of conditions out here.”
And Norrie showed that having the right attitude helps, as he stated: “In terms of attitude, it was maybe top 3 [win]. But I’ve played a lot of big matches, but I’m really pleased with the win and how I handled it. And the roller coaster and the level in the first set was so, so high from both of us.
“But it’s never easy playing Alex. He’s a good friend. And I had to dig so, so deep to win today, so on the attitude side, yeah, top 3.”
