Australia's "gutted" main man said he was back, clueless, to the drawing board, after his enduring dream was dynamited by rising Czech Jakub Mensik, who'd collapsed on court only two days earlier but who rose to crush 'Demon' 0-6 6-2 6-2 6-3 in the third round on another sun-baked day at Roland Garros.
Asked about world No.1 Sinner's exit on Friday, which was followed by Djokovic getting knocked out by teen prodigy Joao Fonseca on Saturday, de Minaur shrugged: "Look, I'd like to think that it wouldn't have affected me, but maybe it did. I really don't know right now.
"But I feel it's a wasted opportunity. Once in a blue moon, you get an opportunity like this, and you have to be able to take it - and I did exactly the opposite. When you don't take them, it's gut-wrenching."
Last year, he'd been two sets up against Alexander Bublik in the second round and lost; on Saturday, he 'bagelled' 20-year-old Mensik, whom he held a 5-0 head-to-head advantage, in the first set, then "took the foot off the gas". If he was utterly crestfallen last year, he seemed barely less miserable this time.
On Wednesday, Mensik needed ferrying to the medical centre in a wheelchair after his four-hour 41-minute epic win over Mariano Navone. "He's come from a physical battle. I'm fresh as they come. I mean, it's just not good. Back to the drawing board. I need to be better," sighed de Minaur.
The continuing hot, sticky conditions on the lovely greenhouse Court Simonne Mathieu should have benefitted him, but Mensik, who'd been at the centre of such alarming scenes on Wednesday, unable to get up off the clay for several minutes, proved much the stronger.
Not to start with, though. The rested de Minaur, with only one three-set match in his legs all week following his second-round walkover, began like a demon.
With an immediate break, he went on an extraordinary run of 16-straight points with the Czech, a step off the pace and sluggish, coughing up 11 errors as he won just five points in the entire 19-minute first-set thrashing.
"I've always felt like I'm that guy, a dog with a bone, just won't let go, won't stop until the very end. Today I don't really understand what changed - I just let him back in," sighed de Minaur.
That, though, isn't the whole story. The Czech re-emerged after the end-of-set break super-charged, hitting more cleanly, scuttling around more convincingly to win a 21-stroke point to help earn a second-game break and starting to bully the Australian with his superior power and accuracy, a familiar scenario.
De Minaur was suddenly being hurried into errors - 17 in the second set - as he lost seven games in a row across the second and third stanzas.
Mensik, the 26th seed who was the last man to defeat Sinner before the world No.1's capitulation here to Juan Manuel Cerundolo, went on another five-game hot streak, racing through the third set and breaking for a 3-0 lead in the fourth.
De Minaur, uncharacteristically, hurled his racquet into the clay and smashed it, earning a code violation, after Mensik had put away a telling volley at 4-2. It seemed to sum up his helplessness and the Czech soon put him out of his misery after two hours 25 minutes.
It left Daria Kasatkina as the only Australian left in the singles draws, and she's the longest of shots against world No.1 Aryna Sabalenka on Court Suzanne Lenglen.
De Minaur isn't sure if he'll now take a break from tennis for a reset, as he did after Roland Garros last year, or try to play himself out of the latest slump on his preferred grass circuit.
"I don't need more reasons to be disappointed in myself. Right now I'm pretty gutted. There's many reasons why I'm disappointed in myself and many reasons why I feel like I should have been better today and should have found a way.
"I'm in a weird stage at the moment where I have put in a lot, and recently I haven't felt like I've gotten a lot back. I really don't know what the solution is."
