Rest or play: Demon wrestling over post-Paris dilemma

By Ian Chadband

Demoralised Alex de Minaur faces a fresh dilemma after a second consecutive early exit from the French Open, admitting he’s flummoxed about the best way to try to bounce back from the latest setback.

Australia’s main man departed Paris looking a bit lost and feeling he’d missed a “once-in-a-blue-moon” chance, not only to enjoy a rare deep run in the shock-littered men’s draw but also to join the world’s top-five for the first time in his career.

It was clear from his now familiar forlorn post-slam news conference that this kind of anti-climax is increasingly becoming almost too dispiriting a trial to take.

But whereas his second-round loss to Alexander Bublik in 2025 was so shattering that it at least left de Minaur in no doubt he must take a mental and physical break from the sport, the latest capitulation to Jakub Mensik has only put him in a quandary.

So he’s discussing with coach Adolfo Gutierrez and his team whether he should take a refreshing break as last year, or plough on and try to get straight back into form on his preferred grass-court circuit.

Last year, he played only one competitive grass-court match going into Wimbledon, a loss at Queen’s Club, before he went on to reach the last-16 at the London slam.

Now he has to decide if he should play a fuller pre-Wimbledon program, as there’s even the possibility, after he moves up from No.7 to a joint career-best ranking of sixth following Roland Garros, that he could even pick up enough points on the grass to join the top-five.

“I’m in a weird stage at the moment where I have put in a lot, and, recently, I haven’t felt like I’ve gotten a lot back,” he shrugged.

“I really don’t know what the solution is – whether it’s to go out and try to play matches and get confidence back and get wins under the belt and just go that way, or the opposite, to just say ‘hey, let’s forget about tennis for a little, let’s make sure I come back missing it and get back on the horse’. I don’t know.”

What he does know is that grass courts give him a pep, but he’s clearly going to find it difficult to get the defeat to Mensik out of his system.

“I’m hoping to kind of bounce back, just brush it off again, but I don’t know…

“I feel like you only get so many opportunities in your career, and you’ve got to be ready to take them, and when you don’t take them, it’s gut-wrenching.

“I guess the good thing is I’ve got the grass coming up, which is a part of the year which I always really enjoy.

“I’ll have to talk to the team and kind of decide in the coming days what to do.

“But it’s back to the drawing board. I need to be better.”