Coffee fanatic Alex de Minaur looks to brew maiden ATP Finals ticket with one last push

VIENNA—Alex de Minaur appreciates his caffeine fix as much as the next person. (Including colleague Grigor Dimitrov.) With the ATP Tour taking him to the Erste Bank Open this week, he’s in a city that knows a thing or two about serving up a quality morning brew.

“So far we are definitely enjoying it. There's something about having a good coffee in cold weather, I’ll tell you that,” he shares with TENNIS.com. “We’ve got a couple good spots right next to the hotel. I must say I have had some good coffees here. Obviously, nothing compared to Australia! But’s it's very close.”

De Minaur needs every ounce of energy to make one final push this season in his bid to punch a maiden ticket to the Nitto ATP Finals. In July, the 25-year-old looked to cement himself as a likely contender when he soared to a career-high No. 6 ranking.

But that rise came with a setback: he was unable to play his Wimbledon quarterfinal match against Novak Djokovic due to a right hip injury that involved “a tear of the cartilage that connect to the adductors.” Vienna marks just his third singles appearance since then, having valiantly pushed himself to produce a last-eight showing at the US Open.

In missing the rest of the North American hard-court events prior to Flushing Meadows and then being sidelined for the entirety of the Asian swing, de Minaur now finds himself at No. 9 in the race to Turin.

“It hasn't been easy by any means. Not being able to play and almost having the opportunity taken away from my hands to go out there and compete, keep striving and playing off that confidence has been tough,” de Minaur says.

“So now we're here at the end of the year, I'm not feeling 100 percent healthy, but there's not too many chances to play matches.”

The Sydney native returned last week in Antwerp, where he went down 7-5 in the third to Hugo Gaston in their quarterfinal. On Tuesday in the Austrian capital, de Minaur put a slow start behind him to thwart Jan-Lennard Struff, 2-6, 6-2, 6-2.

The speedster finished runner-up to Jannik Sinner at Rotterdam in February—his first indoor hard-court final since October 2020. De Minaur is looking to triumph indoors for the first time this week, an effort that would reward him with a spot back inside the Top 8 of the race following Casper Ruud's opening-round Basel exit.

“The best players in indoor events are normally the bigger hitters. They've got perfect conditions for them to hit the ball and nothing's really hurting them too much,” he assesses. “Me being a little bit on the smaller side, I've got to navigate those things and find ways to try and hurt my opponents in different ways. And not let them unload, use their power and these perfect conditions to play.

“So that means trying to be a bit more aggressive, trying to dictate a little bit more. Those are the types of things I've got to do well in these conditions to get good results.”

On Thursday, de Minaur meets Flavio Cobolli during the evening session at the Wiener Stadthalle. The No. 2 seed dispatched the Italian in the third round of January's Australian Open, though Cobolli has since climbed nearly 70 places in his breakout season.