MELBOURNE, Australia — In team sports, the side on the wrong end of a terrible head-to-head record has a few levers to pull.

Players in each team change year on year, so the strengths and attributes of each side shift. Players with less scar tissue from previous meetings can come in to give a fresh look. There are tactics to alter, and even if it goes badly again, it’s just one match that won’t define a season.

Tennis isn’t like those sports. There are no substitutes. There is no easy excision of scar tissue. Players can change tactics and try new things, but without substantial shifts in playing styles, the fundamental matchup and all its lopsidedness remains.

This is the test facing Alex De Minaur, who goes into his Australian Open quarterfinal against world No. 1 Jannik Sinner having lost all nine of their previous matches. He has won just one set out of 21 played.

De Minaur, in tennis speak, has become Sinner’s pigeon: easy prey for the stronger predator. And De Minaur is an outstanding player, ranked No. 8 in the world and carrying Australian hopes in Melbourne. He’s beaten Novak Djokovic and come within a remarkable match point save of beating Carlos Alcaraz, but Sinner has been his kryptonite.

Not every player in a bad matchup is a pigeon. The tennis rankings rarely lie and some players are just better than others. A head to head starts developing soft grey plumage through a combination of volume and style, especially between higher-ranked players who are more likely to run each other in the later stages of big events.

De Minaur joins a long line of tennis pigeons, all of whom have gone through the various stages of rationalization, tactical experimentation and at times sheer delusion about how they might flip a situation which is almost always unflippable.

Lopsided tennis matchups are a part of tennis folklore. One of them delivered arguably the most memorable quote in the sport’s history: “Nobody beats Vitas Gerulaitis 17 times in a row.” Gerulaitis, who won an Australian Open in 1977, delivered the immortal line in 1980 when he finally got the better of Jimmy Connors after losing their previous 16 matches. The following year, Bjorn Borg beat Gerulaitis at Wimbledon to take their head-to-head record to 17-0 and consign the quote to folklore rather than truth.

More recently, Christopher Clarey coined the term ‘unrivalry’ in the New York Times to describe Serena Williams’ 20-2 record against Maria Sharapova, which included 19 straight wins.

The dreadful matchups take many forms. Some of them are horrendous but explicable, like Novak Djokovic beating Gael Monfils in all 20 of their meetings; Rafael Nadal’s 18-0 record against Richard Gasquet and Roger Federer’s 17-0 against David Ferrer. Monfils, Gasquet and Ferrer were second favourite in every one of those matches, mostly because they were playing three of the best to ever pick up a racket. Chris Evert’s 25-0 record over Virginia Ruzici and Steffi Graf’s 21-0 against Nathalie Tauziat are both staggering but understandable, given the gulf between those players.

This doesn’t explain bizarre records like Karen Khachanov having zero wins in five attempts against Dan Evans despite being the higher-ranked player in all of their meetings. Khachanov, a formidable baseliner but not blessed with great touch, has found himself befuddled by Evans’ slices and spins. By the same token, Evans has developed a complex against the Japanese player Yoshihito Nishioka, who is even smaller and trickier than the 5 feet 9 inches (175cm) Brit.

Evans has lost all six of their meetings. After one defeat in the Australian Open second round five years ago, he said, “he just makes it difficult for me, I don’t like playing him.”

He even added: “I didn’t want him to win against Laslo Djere,” who Nishioka beat to set up the meeting.

De Minaur against Sinner sits in that horrendous but explicable category. Like some of those previous pigeons, he is a top-10 player, but is just that level below his opponent in the particular matchup without enough variance in gamestyle to bridge the gap.

This is the most complicated assignment for a pigeon. Being able to make tactical adjustments or create a match environment that the stronger opponent doesn’t enjoy is one thing; when that isn’t possible, maintaining self-belief often tips towards delusion. Looking into Gael Monfils’ eyes at Melbourne Park on Monday, it was impossible not to believe him when he discussed playing Djokovic: “I’m not just saying this. I really have a strong belief that I can beat him. I feel like if I’m solid, if I’m really respecting the game plan, I can beat him.”

Monfils revealed that he has a notebook with copious scribbles from the last 20 years. It documents his opponents and how he might beat them, Djokovic included.

“His game does not really suit me,” said Monfils, who reached this year’s Australian Open fourth round, aged 38. “I have to change. I feel like my game suits him great. I feel like I’m serving good, but he’s still there returning.

“I have less winners, maybe more mistakes. It’s because somehow he’s reading my game.

“I want to beat him. I will try my best, but at the end of the day, he’s special. I always say to people, ‘I’ve never been favourite with Novak, to be honest.’”

Monfils has been so frazzled by his record against Djokovic that he’s gone to some strange places. In the 2016 U.S. Open semifinal, he tried to slow-ball Djokovic for much of the contest in what was one of the strangest matches of Monfils’ and Djokovic’s careers. John McEnroe called Monfils’ approach “unprofessional,” but the desperation of the tennis pigeon is serious.

Other players have had more success tweaking their tactics. Andrea Petkovic, the German former world No. 9, struggled against crafty players like Simona Halep and Agnieszka Radwanska. She ended her career 0-8 against Radwanska, but earned a win against two-time major winner Halep, coming agonizingly close to another towards the end of her career in what ended as a 1-7 head to head.

“She would change direction super frequently and I would keep it crosscourt, so I was always the one running,” Petkovic said in an interview at Melbourne Park.

“So I tried to change the direction before her. I had to play an almost flawless game, but it was the adjustment I made.

“With these players (Halep and Radwanska), there was an annoyance that you have to play them, because you know that your game doesn’t match up well.

“It also gave you a kind of freedom to try new things out tactically. So I liked the strategic challenge of having to think through it.”

If Petkovic were in De Minaur’s shoes against Sinner, she would try something similar to what Tristan Schoolkate did against the Italian in the second round. The Aussie world No. 173 won the first set with a display of all-out aggression, living with the defending champion for a set and a half. “They didn’t have a single rally that went more than twice back and forth,” Petkovic said.

“Schoolkate would play a drop shot or go to the net or serve and volley. And as long as he pulled it off, Jannik didn’t know what to do.”

Pat Rafter, one of the game’s greatest-ever volleyers and a two-time U.S. Open champion, would also like to see his compatriot De Minaur change things up against Sinner. “I would like to see a bit more variation in his game,” Rafter said in an interview Tuesday.

“He’s such a beautiful mover. But maybe he can start using his hands, his finesse, a bit more feel, volleys,” Rafter said.

“Throw a few mixes into the game, because one thing that guys like Sinner want is rhythm. They like that ball coming through fast all the time.”

Rafter admits that he didn’t change much against his Sinner equivalent, Pete Sampras. He lost eight out of their first nine meetings, with the head to head ending 4-12 in Sampras’ favor.

“I just hoped and prayed that I could somehow find a way to get the job done and hopefully Pete had a bad day. If Pete was on, no good,” Rafter said. This is another paradox of the tennis pigeon: they are looking for a way to disrupt an opponent whose tennis disrupts them before the match even begins.

Sam Stosur, the Australian former U.S. Open champion, had an issue against taller flat-hitting opponents like Venus Williams (1-7), Sharapova (2-15) and Victoria Azarenka (1-10) “Maybe in hindsight I should have tried something a bit more unconventional,” Stosur said in an interview on Tuesday. “But I always think when you have success playing a certain way you have to stick with that, or at least think you do.”

Some disagree. “If you have never beaten someone, I would suggest that you probably try something different,” said the American world No. 14 Madison Keys in a news conference Monday.

Among the current top-10 matchups, the closest equivalent to Sinner-De Minaur is probably Taylor Fritz’s dreadful 0-10 record against Djokovic. “I see myself as a completely different player to when I played a lot of those matches,” Fritz said in a news conference last week. Forgetting the past is another strategy easier said then done.

“I don’t think it’s doomed or anything like that,” he said. “I think I’m a much better player than 80 percent of what the record would say.”

De Minaur has similarly tried to pick out some positives from his encounters with Sinner, even if finding positives in a straight-sets defeat in Rotterdam, the Netherlands carries more than a hint of the delusion some players have to employ to get through. Sometimes that can translate into freedom, as it does for world No. 6 Casper Ruud when playing Djokovic.

“Losing in the head-to-head you can kind of play free,” Ruud said in an interview. “You know what’s not working. You know you’ve lost two, three, four, five times before.

“When you get that first win over someone you haven’t beaten, it’s a really good feeling.

“If you’re in the lead like him, it’s: ‘Will this be the day I finally lose to this guy?’”

Ruud, who lost his first five meetings with Djokovic, broke the curse at last year’s Monte Carlo Masters.

World No. 3 and 2023 U.S. Open champion Coco Gauff, who lost 10 of her first 11 matches against Iga Swiatek, has always tried to convince herself that there isn’t much between them, despite a slew of straight-sets defeats. This is a singular example of the pigeon dynamic, with two players consistently fighting for the biggest titles on the WTA Tour having such a slanted rivalry. Gauff has now won two matches in a row against the world No. 2 and five-time Grand Slam champion.

“I know what I have to do against her, but is it going to work that day?” Gauff said in a news conference ahead of the Australian Open. “It’s kind of like how you execute or how

“I feel like now when we play each other, it’s about a few points.”

Sometimes, these head-to-head records can define careers. Gerulaitis’s gallows humour deflects from the fact that his terrible records against Connors and Borg took a big toll on his confidence. Andy Roddick’s career is to a large extent viewed through the prism of his 21-3 losing record against Roger Federer, which included four defeats in Grand Slam finals. He has spoken about how big a psychological obstacle it became as the losses piled up.

On Wednesday night, it is De Minaur’s turn to face one of the toughest challenges in tennis, and in sport.

So far, he’s looking on the bright side. “We’ve never played quarterfinals of a slam,” he said Tuesday.

“So that’s a new one.”

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

Tennis, Women's Tennis

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