Is Carlos Alcaraz more focused than ever?

Alex de Minaur is fleet of foot. At six-foot nothing and barely 150 pounds, he’s small, almost scrawny by today’s pro tennis standard. But he’s not nicknamed “Demon” purely for phonetic reasons, nor did he arrive at his No. 6 world ranking by lottery. De Minaur is a throwback, a hardbitten Aussie battler who neither gives nor asks for quarter.

That’s maybe a good thing, because Carlos Alcaraz certainly gave him none on Tuesday evening at the Australian Open, where the world No. 1 laid waste to de Minaur’s hopes of crashing through the quarterfinal barrier at a Grand Slam—in his seventh attempt. Only two men, Andrey Rublev (10 fails) and Tommy Robredo (7), have stumbled out as often.

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Yet there was honor to be claimed in de Minaur’s effort, for he was beaten by the Magician of Murcia—a little like having lost a game of chess to the late Bobby Fisher. The score was 7-5, 6-2, 6-1, numbers that show how precipitous de Minaur’s decline was after he kindled the hopes of his compatriots with a brief, first-set glimmer of success. It turned out to be St. Elmo’s Fire.

“There were some good parts out there,” de Minaur said in his post-match news conference, “But overall, I’m playing out of my comfort zone and at times out of my skin. Of course, for me to take that next step I’ve got to be comfortable in playing that sort of way for the whole match. That’s what takes it to the next level.”

De Minaur’s plight has not gone unnoticed in the Spanish camp, which has also been shoring up Alcaraz’s defenses against the lapses in concentration he has sometimes gifted to his rivals. That’s a potentially dangerous shortcoming against a competitor like de Minaur, who thrives on drawing opponents into knock-down, drag-out battles, mainly because he’s not designed to blow anyone off the court.

“To be honest, I just feel what he’s trying to do against me, or when he’s facing a top player [is difficult],” Alcaraz said after the match. “We all know his level and style. He’s really fast, he doesn’t miss that often. He gets to the ball really soon and doesn’t let you have much time.

But when he’s trying to be more aggressive we’re sometimes seeing him miss some quite easy balls. I noticed that, and let’s say we (our team) are, like, one step forward in that case. Carlos Alcaraz on Alex de Minaur

Those lapses of Alcaraz’s concentration have become something like an urban legend: seldom seen, always cited. While they are rare, Alcaraz has recognized and addressed the tendency.

“I’ve been working on concentration, on focus,” he said. “Not having ups and downs in the matches has been one of the main goals for me. I’m just trying to work on it in every practice. I’ve had a great mindset and great concentration during the whole tournament. I'm just really proud about seeing all the hard work pay off.”

Alcaraz’s convincing wins are sometimes described as “surgical,” but that doesn’t really capture the man’s genius. Broadcast analyst Patrick McEnroe had a more perceptive observation when Alcaraz leaped to a 3-0 lead in the third set against de Minaur.

“Alcaraz has no game plan,” McEnroe said, referring to the unpredictable nature of the top seed’s game. “It’s like he’s not even thinking. It’s all instinctive.”

As always, Alcaraz was just as willing to go around an opponent as to blast through him. He seemed happy to rally with fury as well as drop shot with finesse. He played defense like a premier NFL cornerback and offense like Tom Brady. And so very much of it looked like nothing familiar, made you blink and wonder, “Did I just see that?”

Take the strange way Alcaraz achieved the decisive break point while leading 1-0 in the key second game of the second set, with de Minaur still in the hunt. Alcaraz took a second serve with an inside-out backhand, a cross between a punch and a flick. The ball flew toward the corner of the court. Too late, de Minaur lunged as the ball leaped away. He straightened up, hands on hips, casting a quick look at his rival. Alcaraz won the next point for 2-0. He was off to the races.

Or just consider Alcaraz’s reaction three games later, after de Minaur outfoxed Alcaraz in one of those cat-and-mouse exchanges at the net, initiated with an Alcaraz drop shot. De Minaur won the point with a scooped backhand cross-court pass. Alcaraz chased to no avail, then ended up at the coaching box, laughing and smiling with his team. Back to business, he cracked an ace to hold serve.

“After the first set and when it got a little bit heavier, it was pretty tough for me to really hurt him at all,” de Minaur said. “That’s the biggest thing. The rallies start. I’m probably hitting the ball bigger than I've hit previously in these types of matches, but I’m still not able to kind of hit through him. Then he’s obviously got the ability to generate on command. If you leave one ball short, then the point's over.”

Tennis is often seen and promoted as a serious, borderline desperate business. But unlike most of his peers, Alcaraz is actually playing in the most literal sense of the word. And it is making people crazy in various ways.

After he was been in the fourth round by Alcaraz, Tommy Paul said, “You know that you’re going to have fun points (playing Alcaraz_. You know that you’re going to, like, have points you both play great tennis. I wish we had more of them today, honestly. That is the fun part about playing Carlos.”

The un-fun part?

It can feel like he’s suffocating you. Tommy Paul on Carlos Alcaraz

Paul is the laid-back sort. Although he’s become thoroughly professional, the game comes easily to him. De Minaur is a different sort, the gym rat to Paul’s ballroom dancer. He takes such beatings more to heart, and likely to do more soul-searching after them. He’s inadvertently become the perfect cipher for the question raging through in tennis: “What can we do about Carlos?”

The only answers provided thus far have come from the racquet of Jannik Sinner, who as the No. 2 seed remains on track to ruin Alcaraz’s chances of becoming the youngest player to achieve a career Grand Slam.

You can still count de Minaur among the players who will leave no stone unturned in an effort to become a worthy challenger to Alcaraz. He once again featured as the last man standing for Australian tennis, a worthy role model in the old-school mold. He remains a litmus test that many very good players fail.

As Pat Cash put it during an interview on Tennis Channel Live at the Australian Open, “He’s one of our [Australian] boys. What is Australian tennis? It’s the morals (Cash probably meant ethics), the focus is on hard work, ruthlessly hard work. You work hard and never give your opponent anything. But afterwards you shake hands and say, ‘Well done.’”

At the moment, nobody is doing that better than Alcaraz.