Mark Edmondson is 70. He’s mentioned here not to say happy birthday, but because his name is invoked almost in the form of an incantation at this time every year.
There it was again on Tuesday in the information package. “[Insert name] is looking to become the first home player to win the Australian Open men’s tennis singles title since Mark Edmondson in 1976.” It’s very nearly a nation’s complex, the Edmondson syndrome.
Now that Nick Kyrgios is, on his own admission, about to slouch off into the sunset as the greatest underperformer in Australian tennis this century, the latest name in those square brackets is Alex de Minaur. “We’re really talking about a contender,” said Nine commentator Todd Woodbridge by way of scene setting on Tuesday evening.
De Minaur is all too aware of the mission that has been thrust upon. After staving off Dutchman Botic van de Zandschulp 6-1, 7-5, 6-4 on Rod Laver Arena in a match that was more fiercely contested than the scoreline suggests, de Minaur said to interviewer John Millman: “As soon as I walk on this court, I know everyone of you guys have my back, so I’m going to try from first point to last.”
In some ways, it’s an unfair burden. De Minaur is further consolidating his place in the game year by year. He enters this one installed in the top 10 and as the eighth seed – his highest ranking at a major yet. He’s been a quarter-finalist in each of the past three major championships, and there’s the rub. There are a number of perennial top tenners on the circuit, plenty of regular quarter-finalists who haven’t cracked it for a title, and as yet another wave gathers behind them, most of them won’t win one.
Alex de Minaur plays a forehand in his opening-round match.Credit: Christopher Hopkins
In the years since Edmondson, Pat Cash, Pat Rafter, Mark Philippoussis, Lleyton Hewitt and most recently Kyrgios have all been cast as Australian Open drought-breakers, but only Cash and Hewitt got even as far as a Melbourne final. They carried both the flame and the curse of Edmondson.
Ash Barty had to deal with this national longing for vocational fulfilment throughout her career, but by the time she won the Open in 2022 and broke a 44-year drought, she was clearly the best player in the world at the time. Her Melbourne win was her third major title, and it’s only because she’s Ash Barty and has other fish to fry that it has not become several more.
There is a parallel in the AFL in St Kilda, 59 years removed from their one and only premiership. That drought has become a byword in footy. The Saints of ’66 often say that, much as they cherish their status, they wish they could pass on the baton. Edmondson surely would.
De Minaur doesn’t shy away from the Holy Grail mission he has been set. He could not avoid it anyway; it’s staring at him as he walks down the corridor of honour onto Rod Laver Arena, now augmented with commentary voiceover as in a museum installation. They were there again as he made his way back to the change rooms, and at the end of the line, almost in sepia tones, is Edmondson.
As a round-one opponent, van de Zandschulp typifies what is challenging about majors. At 29, with no tour titles to his name, he could be called a journeyman.
But he has been inside the top 20 in the world, and last year notched wins over a fading Rafael Nadal in the Davis Cup, then most astonishingly, a rising Carlos Alcaraz at the US Open. He also has been to a major quarter-final. He has all the shots, which might sound lame, but means on his day he can have a very good day.
But de Minaur also has a deep and growing armory to augment his second-to-none court coverage, and adds to it a now formidable serve. It’s not just that he gets many balls back – he fires them back. From junior days, he wasn’t an obvious major champion in the making, but he is now a valid candidate. He’s no less equipped for it than Hewitt in his day.
This was a complete performance, not to be confused with dominant. The first set was all on de Minaur’s terms and took only 26 minutes. When he led by a break in the second, van de Zandschulp changed up his game and posed de Minaur a whole new range of questions and the match took on a new complexion. De Minaur had to save two set points before fashioning one of his own, and it was enough. It had taken more than an hour.
The third set took almost a further hour and de Minaur had to save further break points before at last making a breakthrough of his own. As Stefan Edberg used to intone repeatedly in his deadpan monotone, tennis is all about what happens on the big points.
Dutchman Botic van de Zandschulp pulled off an incredible ‘tweener’.Credit: Nine, Australian Open
Van De Zandschulp at least will go home with one souvenir. Caught out by a de Minaur lob, he chased it into a corner and over the baseline and hit a cross-court tweener for a clean winner into the diagonal corner. De Minaur was at one with the crowd; he could only laugh. Whoever wins, there will not be a better shot played in the Australian Open this year.
We’re so accustomed to great tennis players as prodigies – emerging in their teens and early 20s as the holy trinity did, as Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner are now – that we sometimes overlook those who make steady, methodical, incremental progress. De Minaur is one. His game is getting bigger every season, and with it his confidence, and he still only 25.
Which is great, but Mark Edmondson is starting to get on.
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