De Minaur: Major Motivation for Queen’s Club Success
By Richard Pagliaro | Wednesday, June 17, 2026
Photo credit: Katie Boulter Instagram
Alex de Minaur’s queen provides major motivation for a Queen’s Club run this week.
The top-seeded de Minaur swept Denis Shapovalov 6-4, 6-1 on the grass of Andy Murray Arena at Queen’s Club.
De Minaur improved to 6-0 lifetime against Shapovalov a decade after the Canadian defeated the Aussie to win the Wimbledon boys’ championship.
World No. 6 de Minaur, who will play American Brandon Nakashima for a semifinal spot, has major motivation for a deep Queen’s Club run: Matching fiancé Katie Boulter, who knocked off 2021 US Open finalist Leylah Fernandez and world No. 2 Elena Rybakina en route to the Queen’s Club women’s semifinals last week.
While de Minaur called Boulter’s run “inspiring”, he also conceded feeling pressure to match her semifinal result or “I’ll never hear the end of it.”
“Oh, it’s amazing. I think it brings out the best in each other,” de Minaur said of the rivalry with Boulter. “We kind of have a little bit of that competitive nature in us where we both want to do better than each other, and it just kind of, yeah, brings out a healthy competition, right.
“The same way that now that I’m playing here at Queen’s, I’ve got to do my best to kind of try and at least match her performance, because if not, I’ll never hear the end of it.”
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