Alex de Minaur fires back at social media critic in late-night war of words after Australian Open loss

Alex de Minaur has fired back at a British tennis blogger who criticised his hapless Australian Open performance against Jannik Sinner in a late-night social media comment which has now gone viral.

Australia’s No.1 ranked player made it 10 straight losses to Sinner, who has become his tennis kryptonite, with his 6-3, 6-2, 6-1 thumping at Rod Laver Arena on Wednesday night.

In a social media post during the third set, when the result was a fait accompli, prominent tennis fan and independent commentator ‘Pavvy G’ on X made a harsh assessment of the No.8 seed.

“Alex de Minaur has zero self belief that he can even compete with Sinner let alone beat him. Awful performance from him,” Pavvy G said.

Responding after his match in a clearly frustrated, late-night post, de Minaur said: “Hey mate it’s a shame that you never became a good enough player to experience playing Jannik.

“I’m sure you would’ve put up a better performance and know exactly how to beat him. Wishing you all the best!!!”

The reply has since had 14,000 likes and 733,000 views — almost triple that of the original post.

Re-sharing de Minaur’s response, the blogger said: “Fair play and a good response to be honest!”

But he also doubled down on his criticism of de Minaur later in the match

“Alex de Minaur’s performance is one of the worst ever performances that I’ve seen from a top 10 player in a grand slam,” Pavvy G said.

“Sinner is playing decent but not spectacular and is making errors but Alex seems to have frozen in front of his home crowd and can’t even rally with Sinner.”

De Minaur’s reply sent the tennis blogger into a spin, with a number of subsequent comments about the Australian following the original.

“There’s nothing like deflecting from a shocking performance,” he said.

“De Minaur didn’t like being called out by me for playing poorly. It’s fine for him to disagree with me and fine for me to have an opinion.”

So overwhelmed by the influx of feedback and response his interaction with de Minaur was receiving, Pavvy G was compelled to post a 10-minute video of his thoughts on “the hypocrisy of tennis media”.

“Some of my thoughts whilst he has the right to do that, bloggers have a right to criticise player’s performance too,” he wrote at the top of the video.

In the video, Pavvy G explained two problems he has with de Minaur’s comments.

One is that it suggests, he says, that no one can comment on a player’s performance without having achieved more in the game than them. On that logic, most players’ coaches would be obsolete.

Second, he took de Minaur to task on comments he made in his post-match press conference, accusing him of having a defeatist attitude before the match even started.

“Yeah, I mean, he’s built this aura up from beating everyone,” de Minaur said of Sinner after the match.

“Like, that’s the thing about it, right? It’s not like he’s just had a good week here or good week there. He’s just beaten everyone.

“I think the best way to describe it is the fact that he was able to — I don’t know if it was last year or two years ago — play Novak here and play pretty flawless, and, again, give him not too many games, right?

“Novak out here is probably the best player to have ever played on these courts, right? The fact that he’s (Sinner) got this top level that he can do this to players, it’s pretty tough.

“You go into the match, and you know it’s going to be a battle, it’s going to be tough, you’re going to try different things. But then you’re an hour and 30 in, and you’re struggling to win games, and you’re trying to find ways to get on the board. It’s pretty surreal.”

Pavvy G noted that Djokovic, despite playing under illness last year, was still able to put a dent in Sinner’s run to the title.

As was de Minaur’s compatriot, Aussie qualifier Tristan Schoolkate, in the second round.

“Odd that Alex mentions Djokovic performance against Sinner last year,” Pavvy G said.

“Djokovic took a set off him and played with a fever through nearly every match last year, hardly comparable to his awful performance.

“But whatever makes him feel better, even Tristan Schoolkate did better!”