\n<\/p>\n
De Minaur will be among those willing Alcaraz to victory after maintaining his interest in the season-ending competition despite opening with back-to-back defeats.<\/p>\n
The 26-year-old was reluctant to trust the news that he would qualify with an Alcaraz win when he was initially informed in his post-match interview.<\/p>\n
De Minaur had lost his past 16 matches against top 10 players, and each of the five matches he had previously played at the ATP Finals.<\/p>\n
A painful defeat by Musetti on Tuesday, in which De Minaur held a 5-3 lead in the deciding set before losing four consecutive games to concede the match, had rocked his confidence.<\/p>\n
But, against an opponent whom he had lost the two previous meetings, De Minaur reset mentally to produce an inspired display against Fritz. <\/p>\n
“It means a lot. A couple of days ago I was in a pretty dark place,” De Minaur told Sky Sports.<\/p>\n
“More than anything, I feel proud of my efforts. Not for just coming out and winning, but also the mindset. I made peace with what had happened and just committed.”<\/p>\n
Speaking in his post-match interview, he said on court: “I’ve dealt with a fair bit of heartbreak recently. <\/p>\n
“I’ve worked really hard, so it was good to get a positive reward for that.<\/p>\n
“[The loss to Musetti] was a tough pill to swallow. I didn’t overthink today, I just went out and committed to what I needed to do. I continued to back myself and, whether it worked or it didn’t, I was going to leave it all out there today.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
De Minaur will be among those willing Alcaraz to victory after maintaining his interest in the season-ending competition despite opening with back-to-back defeats. The 26-year-old was reluctant to trust the news that he would qualify with an Alcaraz win when he was initially informed in his post-match interview. De Minaur had lost his past 16<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":972,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/971\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}