Alex de Minaur admitted he was searching for answers after his Roland Garros campaign ended in the third round to Jakub Mensik.
After a blazing start, which saw the eighth-seeded Australian claim a perfect first set in just 19 minutes, De Minaur was unable to stop the 20-year-old Czech’s charge.
Mensik stormed back to record a 0-6 6-2 6-2 6-3 victory and progress to the second week of the claycourt major for the first time.
De Minaur, on the other hand, will spend the days ahead contemplating what might have been after failing to back up the form he showed as a Hamburg semifinalist.
“Pretty disappointing, missed opportunity,” assessed the Aussie, who’d won five of his past six claycourt matches prior to meeting Mensik.
“Just [took my] foot off the gas. I let him back into the match, and then just, you know, a little bit of what's been happening the last month – I just couldn't get out of the cycle.
“[It’s] very unlike me, very disappointed in myself, because, I mean, under all kind of circumstances, this is the type of match that I need to find a way to win.
“He's come from a physical battle. I'm fresh as they come. Yeah, I mean, it's just not good.”
De Minaur described his famed competitiveness as being like “a dog with a bone”. He lamented the fact this asset felt dulled during his performance against Mensik, who booked a fourth-round meeting with 11th seed Andrey Rublev.
His theory? The incredible physical and mental effort to improve his game, ascend the rankings, and establish himself as a top-10 player – a position he's maintained for the better part of two years in a sport with a gruelling schedule – might be taking its toll.
“I'm in a weird stage at the moment where I have put in a lot, and yeah, recently I haven't felt like I've gotten a lot back,” said the world No.7.
“So [I’m] trying to find that balance of whether, it's again, you just put your head down, get back to work, and there is no other way forward than to go through, right?
“That's kind of the mentality I have had my whole career, but I feel like it's been a long couple of years of that type of mentality. Maybe that's taking a little bit of a toll on me right now.
“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, [and] just say, ‘hey, let's forget about tennis for a little while, let's make sure I come back missing it and get back on the horse’.”
For De Minaur, the good news is that his beloved grasscourt swing approaches, and he has an impressive track record of re-setting.
Last year, after a second-round defeat at Roland Garros to Alexander Bublik – who used that upset as a springboard to the quarterfinals, and later the top 10 himself – De Minaur rebounded immediately.
The Aussie advanced to the fourth round of Wimbledon, won his next tournament at Washington DC, then reached the US Open quarterfinals.
He is next scheduled to compete at the ATP 500 event at Queen’s Club, where he reached the final in 2023.
“I mean, that's what I'm hoping for, right? To kind of bounce back, just brush it off again,” said De Minaur, a Wimbledon quarterfinalist in 2024.
“So 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'm hoping that I can kind of get back to where I should be and the type of player I should be whenever I step out on court.
“That's going to be the goal. But, yeah, first I need to forget about today somehow.”