De Minaur wastes match point, falls to Norrie again as seed carnage deepens in Montreal
Alex de Minaur held a match point and a two-set cushion, then found new ways to lose a match he was supposed to win, falling to Cameron Norrie (5-7, 7-6, 6-1). Ben Shelton is the only Top 10 remaining in the draw.
Cameron Norrie, 2026
Alex de Minaur held a match point. He was one set up and leading the second-set 5-2 before that. By the time Cameron Norrie walked off Court Rogers on Thursday, none of it mattered: the No. 3 seed had lost 7-5, 6-7, 1-6 in the third round of the National Bank Open presented by Rogers in Monyreal, the latest and cruellest instalment of a problem he has been open about for months – his difficulty closing out matches he is supposed to win.
The Australian looked in total control for most of two sets. He served out the opener 7-5, then built a 3-1 lead in the second-set tiebreak, holding a match point on his own racket. Norrie, ranked No. 37 and appearing in their seventh career meeting, saved it, ran off the closing points to steal the breaker, and never let de Minaur into the match again, closing it out 6-1 as the Australian looked drained and increasingly desperate in the decider.
The habit he cannot shake
For de Minaur, the defeat fits an increasingly familiar shape. At 27 and a career-high No. 5 as recently as last month, he arrived in Montreal as the highest-ranked player left in the draw and still chasing the one thing that has eluded him: a first ATP Masters 1000 title. He reached the final here in 2023, his only appearance in a Masters 1000 championship match, and has since collected seven Grand Slam quarter-finals and 11 tour-level titles without ever crossing that particular line.
Last year he reached the round of 16 at eight of nine Masters 1000 events; this season, before Thursday, he had done it only once, at Monte-Carlo.
Norrie’s win was his second over a top-10 player this season, and both have come against de Minaur, who had won their previous meeting in Monte-Carlo in a decider after Norrie beat him at Indian Wells in March. The result pushes their ATP Head2Head to 4-3 in the Briton’s favour and denies de Minaur a rubber match he has now lost more often than not lately.
It is a pattern he has acknowledged publicly and often this season: the ability to build a lead, and the struggle to see it through.
Norrie, for his part, extended a career built on stubbornness rather than raw firepower: the 2021 Indian Wells champion – still the only British man to win that Masters 1000 in its 46-year history – reached the Montreal round of 16 for the first time since 2022, equalling his best result at the event. He is now one win away from moving past Jack Draper as British No. 1 in the PIF ATP Live Rankings, a target that seemed unlikely when he trailed by a set and a double break in the second.
Seed carnage all around him
De Minaur’s exit also reshapes the state of the draw. Of the ten highest-ranked players in the world, only Ben Shelton remains in Montreal, according to tournament tracking – Jannik Sinner, Carlos Alcaraz, Felix Auger-Aliassime and Novak Djokovic withdrew before the tournament, while Zverev and now de Minaur have both lost. Daniil Medvedev, Taylor Fritz and Flavio Cobolli are also still through, but only three of the tournament’s ten seeded players inside the top 10 remain in the draw – a reminder of how thin the leaderboard has grown by the third round.
The upset landed a day after Alexander Zverev walked out of his own presser having all but predicted it. Zverev, coming off what he called the worst match of his season, warned that the conditions in Montreal were going to produce exactly this kind of chaos. “I think there’s going to be some strange results, ranking-wise, player-wise, that you maybe don’t expect at other tournaments,” he said, adding that the balls and the transition onto hard courts after a break were catching everyone off guard. “It’s the first hardcourt event for us in a couple of months. I think everybody’s still trying to find their feet.” Twenty-four hours later, his words looked less like an excuse than a forecast.
De Minaur, still without a Masters 1000 title three years after his Toronto final, will have to go looking for the answer somewhere other than Montreal.
