By Richard Pagliaro | Thursday, November 13, 2025
Photo credit: Shi Tang/Getty
Inalpi Arena was a haunted house for Alex de Minaur.
Winless in five prior ATP Finals matches, de Minaur candidly confessed those painful losses were on the verge of cannibalizing his competitive spirit.
Today, a determined de Minaur slayed the demons of doubt and knocked Taylor Fritz out of Turin with a spirited 7-6(3), 6-3 victory.
It’s a remarkable 48-hour rebound for de Minaur, who failed to serve out the match against Lorenzo Musett suffering a gut-wrenching 7-5, 3-6, 7-5 loss after holding a 5-3, 30-15 lead in the decider on Tuesday night.
That devastating defeat sent the feisty Aussie to dark places causing de Minaur to divulge “it’s getting to a point where mentally it’s killing me.”
Today, the man nicknamed Demon showed renewed life after near round-robin death. De Minaur raised his 2025 record to 56-23, including an ATP-best 43-16 mark on hard courts.
Alex De Minaur, that is CLUTCH 🙌
A 7-6 6-3 win over Fritz keeps his #NittoATPFinals dream alive! pic.twitter.com/gqSzJmWQu5
— Tennis TV (@TennisTV) November 13, 2025
“Obviously coming from a heartbreaker just a couple of days ago, I came into the match today with my tactics,” de Minaur told Tennis Channel’s Prakash Amritraj afterward. “I was gonna live and die by the sword. I was gonna play my brand of tennis, my game style and I knew that was the only way.
“I’m happy that I was able to get some positive reinforcement for a long year and also a lot of adversity in this particular tournament.”
Talk about remarkable resilience: It is de Minaur’s first career ATP Finals match win that led to his first semifinal in Turin.
Top-seeded Carlos Alcaraz, who had already clinched his semifinal spot in the Jimmy Connors Group, defeated Italian Lorenzo Musetti 6-4, 6-1 in today’s final round-robin win. Alcaraz’s victory means de Minaur joins both Alcaraz and Bjorn Borg Group champion Jannik Sinner in the semifinals. It’s a historic final four trip: De Minaur joins Hall of Famers John Newcombe and Lleyton Hewitt, his Davis Cup captain, as the third Aussie semifinalist in ATP Finals history.
“Couple days ago was one of the toughest days I’ve had in my career,” de Minaur said. “I was in a very, very dark spot. I could tell you that I hated the sport.
“Here we are two days later and I’m feeling great about myself. It’s incredible.
But more than anything, regardless of the result today, I had made peace with myself. That was a big, big moment. I knew the way I wanted to play. I was going to commit to it from the first point to the last. I was okay with the result not going my way. I had made peace with that.”
Turning his shoulders into his shots, de Minaur actually out-served one of the sport’s biggest servers in Fritz. De Minaur won 30 of 36 first-serve points, faced only one break point and rallied from Love-30 down in the final game on the strength of an ace, a serve-and-volley and serve winner wide.
When pressure and self-doubt came to hunt the Demon in that final game, the gritty Aussie counterpuncher boldly knocked those transgressors out with a forward finishing kick.
“It’s probably one of the darkest times I’ve had just in my career, right,” de Minaur said. “Some people may think I’m exaggerating but you know there’s a lot that goes on in this head of mine.
“I’m a perfectionist. I ask a lot of myself and sometimes that is one of my bigger downfalls. So it’s just a feel-good moment. Whatever happens, I walked into the match today with a clear mind-set. I made my peace just wanted to go out there and play on my terms and just forget about the results for a while. And hey, look at that: I played some pretty good tennis today.”
Spare a thought for Fritz, who looked physically fried after falling to Alcaraz 6-7(2), 7-5, 6-3 in a punishing two hour, 48-minute marathon match on Tuesday. After that defeat, Fritz admitted tendinitis left his cranky knee feeling “completely cooked.”
Facing one of the sport’s fastest players in de Minaur wasn’t exactly a panacea for knee pain. The flat-hitting Demon repeatedly made the 6’4” Fritz bend low to scrape calf-high shots off the quick Turin court. Fritz looked a half-step slow to the ball in the first set when his fiery forehand betrayed his cause with a bunch of errors off that wing. Fritz ends 2025 with a 53-23 record missing the ATP Finals semifinals for the first time in three appearances.
This loss eliminates 2024 finalist Fritz from semifinal contention and puts the American year-end No. 1 ranking in play though Ben Shelton, winless in his two round-robin matches, will have to beat Wimbledon winner Sinner to surpass Fritz for the top spot in U.S. tennis.
“He’s never been my favorite person to play because I think, one, he moves so well, but
he doesn’t play very defensive against me,” Fritz said of de Minaur. “I watch him play other matches. Sometimes I feel like he is willing to rally, play a bit safer. I feel like he plays very,
like, offensive against me. His ball stays very flat and low. It can sometimes be tough to attack off that ball if I’m not feeling great with my forehand.
“A lot of times that I’ve lost to him, I haven’t been able to just hit the forehand off that, like, flat,
flat low ball that he hits well enough. Yeah, that’s part of it. Like, he moves so well, but at the same time I can’t just be steady because he also has the capabilities of being very aggressive, too, taking the ball early.”
Knowing he needed a straight sets win, de Minaur got off to a fast start exploiting three Fritz errors to break for 2-1. De Minaur backed up the break at 30 for 3-1.
Gradually finding his range, Fritz sent a jolting return right back through the middle breaking at 15 and sparking a run that saw him win eight of nine points to level the set at 3-all.
Facing break point at 5-all, Fritz thumped an ace out wide. That big blow helped him held for 6-5.
When de Minaur slid a flat forehand pass down the line, he forced the first-set tiebreaker.
In a foreboding sign, Fritz sailed a forehand to cede the mini break on the first point. Fritz’s formidable forehand failed him in the breaker—he committed 10 forehand eros in the set.
Serving with more conviction than the American, de Minaur drew a shanked forehand pass for another minibreak at 4-1 then drilled a forehand winner crosscourt for a 6-1 lead and a fistful of set points.
On his third set point, de Minaur dotted the center stripe with a serve winner snatching a one-set lead after 56 physical minutes of play. De Minaur served more effectively than Fritz in the first set, winning 17 of 21 first-serve points.
Empowered, de Minaur pressed his advantage roaring through 12 of the first 15 points in the second set, including a side-spinning backhand strike down the line for the love break in the second game.
Fritz held for 1-3, but de Minaur again deployed the serve-and-volley holding at 15 for 4-1.
Serving at 2-5, Fritz was careening corner to corner as de Minaur won a crackling 22-shot rally with a smash for match point. Digging in, Fritz showed defensive defiance running down the Aussie’s volley and then spinning a backhand pass down the line. That sequence helped Fritz come back and hold for 3-5 putting de Minaur right back into the same spot he was when he blew the lead against Musetti on Tuesday.
As far as Match Point saves go…
RIDICULOUS, @Taylor_Fritz97#NittoATPFinals pic.twitter.com/EVYXNlWRqk
— Tennis TV (@TennisTV) November 13, 2025
When de Minaur dropped to love-30 serving for the match, you could almost cue the late, great Chris Cornell singing “I fell on black days” as sights and sounds threatened to haunt the Aussie again.
This time, de Minaur defied pressure. Snapping off an ace out wide followed by a serve-volley play brought the Aussie even. De Minaur drilled the wide serve for a second match point.
Bolting one final serve down the T to end it in one hour, 34 minutes, de Minaur transformed Tuesday’s house of horror into a coming out party with his first ATP Finals win.
“It’s relief after a long year to get over the line and get something to go my way, right? After that match point, I just started laughing with my team because I was, like, there’s something up there that’s against me,” de Minaur said. “I’ve got the evil eye or something. I’m just not allowed to win matches
anymore. Then we go Love-30.
“Actually it took some of my best tennis today. I hit an incredible ace. Then 15-30, I served and volleyed. I just had the ultimate aggressive mindset. Even from the toughest moments, which I could have easily gone back into default and tried to play solid and kind of play not to lose, I played to win. That’s why I was able to win today. So I’m very proud.”
