'Deflated' De Minaur vows to fight on after another loss to Alcaraz

MELBOURNE, Jan 27 : Alex de Minaur said he will dust himself off and keep fighting after his 7-5 6-2 6-1 loss to Carlos Alcaraz in the Australian Open quarter-finals on Tuesday.

Alcaraz moved into the last four at Melbourne Park after crushing the hopes of sixth seed De Minaur, who was aiming to end a five-decade Australian wait for a home men's champion at the tournament.

While De Minaur made the Spaniard work for the win, his defeat seemed almost inevitable and he succumbed in two hours and 15 minutes.

"You try to do the right things, you try to keep on improving, but when the results don't come or the scoreline doesn't reflect those improvements, then of course you feel quite deflated," De Minaur told reporters.

"I mean, you get back up, right? That's what it is. I can decide to look at it two different ways, right? I can look at the fact that, I've lost to Rafa (Nadal), Novak (Djokovic), Jannik (Sinner) twice, now Carlos. 

"I'm not losing too many matches to players I possibly shouldn't lose to, right? You just have to keep on moving. It's the only way. As tough as it is when you get results like this, you get back up, you get back on the horse, and that's it."

De Minaur now has a 6-0 losing record against world number one Alcaraz, and he has been beaten 13 times in a row by world number two Sinner.

Asked what needed to be done for him to bridge the gap to the top two players on the men's tour, the 26-year-old said: "Some tweaks here and there that's going to allow me to increase ball speed.

"Because at the moment the way my natural groundstrokes are, they're quite flat, and it's quite difficult for me. There's a whole lot of risk for me to play at a very high ball speed. 

"I feel like in this case, Jannik or Carlos, they