Alex De Minaur has scored the biggest win of his young career with a straight-sets upset of big-serving Milos Raonic.
The 18-year-old wildcard muzzled the Canadian’s powerful service game to prevail 6-4 6-4 on Wednesday night and score by far the biggest win of his burgeoning career.
A quivering De Minaur was struggling to come to terms with what he had accomplished after the match.
‘I honestly cant believe it,’ he said on court. ‘It’s going to take a while for me to believe what’s happened just now.’
‘I’m lost for words. It’s honestly crazy.’
Alex De Minaur has scored the biggest win of his young career with a straight-sets upset of big-serving Milos Raonic
The 18-year-old wildcard muzzled the Canadian’s powerful service game to prevail 6-4 6-4 on Wednesday night and score by far the biggest win of his burgeoning career
De Minaur is the latest in a golden generation of Australian tennis stars including Nick Kyrgios, Bernard Tomic and Thanasi Kokkinakis
Raonic was clearly rusty in his first singles match since October last year, making 18 costly unforced errors to just one.
De Minaur capitalised handsomely to set up a clash with another teenager, Saudi Arabian-born American qualifier Michael Mmoh, who upset Germany’s Mischa Zverev earlier on Wednesday.
It will be his first ATP quarter-final appearance.
‘I was going to come out here, compete my hardest and give it my all and I actually ended up playing an unbelievable match.’
‘I was going to come out here, compete my hardest and give it my all and I actually ended up playing an unbelievable match’
De Minaur bellowed his catch-cry ‘Blue Wall’ after securing the win, a State of Origin reference that also explains his approach to tennis
He also credited Lleyton Hewitt and the NSW State of Origin team for providing the inspiration for his stunning victory.
De Minaur showed flashes of his mentor Hewitt’s ferocious baseline defence in nullifying former world No.3’s booming serve, and such was the confidence he got from it, he immediately outed himself as a NSW rugby league supporter despite being deep in enemy territory in Queensland.
De Minaur bellowed his catch-cry ‘Blue Wall’ after securing the win, an Origin reference that also explains his approach to tennis.
‘Blue Wall is what the NSW State of Origin team calls themselves,’ he told reporters.
‘And it’s sort of a mindset of trying to be a brick wall potentially, just not giving anything away, not giving anything cheap away, and just pretty much leaving it all out there.
‘So that’s what I like to think Blue Wall is. That’s what us New South Welshmen try to do while we’re on the court.’