Alex de Minaur’s flat finish to the grand slam year turned brutal in New York, his US Open campaign cut short on a day when Australian tennis veered from despair to delirium within a few chaotic hours.
The world No.7 was bundled out in the second round by Botic van de Zandschulp, 6-4, 7-5, 6-2, a straight-sets defeat that threatens to drag him out of the top 10 within weeks and underlines how sharply his season has cooled since its electric start.
“I gave myself every chance … but my level today wasn’t good enough,” he admitted. No excuses, no sugar-coating. Just a bad day at the office, and on this stage, that’s usually fatal.
De Minaur’s season stalls on familiar stage
Flushing Meadows has been good to de Minaur in recent years. Quarter-finals in each of the past two US Opens. Five years since he’d lost this early here. This time he never found the gears.
The Dutchman, already a known giant-killer in New York after taking out Carlos Alcaraz in this same round two years ago, arrived in better touch and played like it. Heavy off both wings, aggressive on return, he went after de Minaur’s serve and kept going until it cracked.
That serve has been the Australian’s pressure point all year. It buckled again. Seven double faults, only four aces, 11 break points faced, five of them conceded. One of those doubles left him a set and 4-3 down. Another familiar sinking feeling.
De Minaur fought, as he always does. He chased, scrambled, barked at himself, tried to light a fire. At 4-3 down in the second set, a net-cord backhand winner gave him 15-40 and a rare moment of luck. He broke back, then surged ahead, threatening to flip the script.
The pressure finally told – on him, not van de Zandschulp.
Serving at 5-5, de Minaur endured a marathon game, saved four break points, then yielded on the fifth after a mishit from the Dutchman dropped short and dragged him in. Van de Zandschulp even apologised. The Australian still couldn’t make him pay.
Two sets down, history glared at him. He had never overturned that deficit in 27 attempts. That number did not change.
He disappeared off court between sets, came back trying to raise the tempo, and promptly overcooked a forehand to surrender serve in the third game. Two break points came and went in the next. When van de Zandschulp broke again, the contest was effectively over.
For de Minaur, the defeat caps his least productive grand slam season in three years. He reached a second Australian Open quarter-final in January, but only the third round at Roland-Garros and the fourth at Wimbledon. The loss to Flavio Cobolli at the All England Club hit him hard; he admitted then that failing to rise on that stage “breaks me inside”. Since February, he has gone beyond the quarter-finals at any event just once.
Now, in New York, the shine has faded further. The ranking will follow if he can’t arrest the slide.
Sweeny seizes his moment
On the other side of the grounds, another Australian was living the kind of day de Minaur has spent his career chasing.
Dane Sweeny, a 170-centimetre grinder ranked 123 in the world, walked into Louis Armstrong Stadium as a wildcard and walked out with his first top-20 scalp, his first third-round appearance at a major and the biggest win of his life.
He dismantled Lorenzo Musetti, the Italian stylist and dual grand slam semi-finalist, 3-6, 6-1, 6-2, 6-2 in a result that will echo well beyond this fortnight.
Little has come easy for Sweeny. Two years ago, he stepped away from the sport for several months, worn down by a form slump just as he felt on the verge of breaking through. He came back, kept plugging away in the shadows, and arrived in New York not even guaranteed a spot in the main draw.
He was originally slated to play qualifying. Late withdrawals nudged Alexei Popyrin into the main draw cut-off and shifted Tennis Australia’s reciprocal wildcard to Sweeny instead. He turned that stroke of fortune into his first grand slam win outside Melbourne Park when Corentin Moutet retired injured in the second round, trailing 7-6 (7-4), 6-4, 3-0.
Against Musetti, he did the rest himself.
The Italian’s body betrayed him after the opening set. He spent much of the final three sets hunched over in the corner, clearly under the weather, and took an off-court medical timeout at 3-0 down in the third. He flickered occasionally, but Sweeny never let him breathe.
Twice Musetti clawed back a break, only to give it straight back. Sweeny’s relentless ball-striking and tireless court coverage didn’t dip, even as the match tilted firmly his way. The fourth set followed the same pattern: an immediate break, then a chase Musetti never looked like winning.
“I’m so grateful to be able to even compete in grand slams,” Sweeny said, soaking in the moment. “The tennis journey is such a rollercoaster … To win, and to get a couple of wins, is awesome.”
He knows how thin the margins are. “Tennis can change on the flip of a coin,” he said. “You’ve just got to keep persevering … I knew it was somehow going to swing in my favour if I just kept going, and I did. Now I’m here, and it’s the best decision I ever made to come back after that two months.”
The reward is a guaranteed payday north of $400,000, a provisional career-high live ranking of No.109, and another crack at a seeded Italian, Luciano Darderi, in the third round.
Kyrgios accepts ban as Australian fortunes split
While Sweeny climbed and de Minaur fell, the third pillar of Australian men’s tennis was making headlines of a very different kind.
The International Tennis Integrity Agency confirmed that Nick Kyrgios has accepted a one-month suspension for out-of-competition use of cocaine, reduced from three months after he agreed to enter a treatment program. The ban, which cost him prizemoney and ranking points from his appearance in Mallorca, officially ended on Thursday, contingent on him completing that program.
Kyrgios has already called it a “huge mistake” and apologised to his family, friends and fans. He told the ITIA he used cocaine socially on a night out before competing in Mallorca. Former doubles partner and long-time rival Stefanos Tsitsipas said after his first-round US Open win that the news did not surprise him and that he had been aware of the situation.
It was another jarring twist on a day that already felt like a referendum on the state of Australian tennis.
Qualifier Tristan Schoolkate briefly threatened to deliver a second shock to Italian tennis, snatching the first set from Roland-Garros finalist Flavio Cobolli before fading 3-6, 6-3, 6-4, 7-5 against the No.5 seed.
Alexei Popyrin, who had been the beneficiary of those late withdrawals that freed up Sweeny’s wildcard, also bowed out. After a flying start against Alejandro Tabilo, he unravelled 2-6, 7-6 (7-4), 7-6 (7-3), 6-2 against the 25th-seeded Chilean left-hander, leaving the court a dispirited figure.
By the end of the session, Sweeny stood alone as the last Australian singles player left standing in New York.
Around him, the draw kept shifting. Third seed Felix Auger-Aliassime departed in four sets to Karen Khachanov. Coco Gauff, Iga Swiatek, Taylor Fritz and Naomi Osaka all moved through, steady at the top while the chaos swirled beneath.
For de Minaur, the question now is blunt. Was this just a jagged bump at the end of a long season, or the start of a slide that will cost him the status he fought so hard to earn?
For Sweeny, the answer is simpler. His season, and maybe his career, has just been given the jolt he always believed was coming.
