Australian Next Gen star Alex De Minaur beat Italian 34-year-old veteran Andreas Seppi 7-5 7-6 (7-5) to lift his maiden ATP title in front of his home fans.
Hometown star Alex De Minaur has become the youngest winner at the Sydney International tournament since his mentor Lleyton Hewitt triumphed at this tournament in 2001. The Australian 19-year-old player is the first home player to win in Sydney since Bernard Tomic in 2013.
Seppi got an immediate break in the first game of the opening set after forcing an error from De Minaur and fended off a break point with a backhand down the line winner. The Italian saved three more break points in the fourth game. De Minaur pulled the break back in the sixth game to draw level to 3-3 and claimed another break in the 12th game on his third opportunity to close out the opening set 7-5 after 75 minutes.
Seppi got a break lead in the seventh game of the second set after a double fault from De Minaur, but the Sydney born player broke back in the eighth game after Seppi netted a backhand. Both players held serve in the next four service games setting up a tie-break. Seppi got a mini-break with a service winner to open up a 4-2 lead. Seppi made a forehand error on the 10th point and hit a backhand long to face the first match point. De Minaur converted his first championships point on the 12th point to seal the win, when Seppi netted a backhand.
De Minaur played his second consecutive final in his home tournament one year after finishing runner-up to Danil Medvedev. The Australian teenager was named ATP Newcomer of the Year in 2018 after a successful season, in which he rose from number 208 to number 31 in the ATP Ranking and he reached two more finals in Washington and at the Next Gen ATP Finals in Milan. The “Demon”, as De Minaur is nicknamed, began playing tennis at the age of 4 after his Spanish mother Esther signed him up for lessons. His father Anibal comes from Uruguay. Alex moved to the Spanish town of Alicante and split time growing up between Spain and Australia. He is mentored by former World Number 1 Lleyton Hewitt, who was Alex’s idol growing up.
“It’s crazy that this actually happened. I thought it would not happen. Third time lucky, and you guys don’t know how much it means to do it in front of all you guys, in front of my home fans”,said a delighted De Minaur in the post match interview.
Seppi was aiming to win his first title since the 2012 Kremlin Cup in Moscow.
