Tennis great Wally Masur doesn't feel Alex de Minaur needs to reinvent the wheel but others want change following the Australian's latest grand slam reality check in Melbourne.
De Minaur's 7-5 6-2 6-1 loss to world No.1 Carlos Alcaraz on Tuesday night was his seventh consecutive quarter-final exit at a major - and third humbling straight-sets defeat at the hands of tennis' seemingly invincible new big two.
Australia's world No.6 entered his latest showdown with Alcaraz in career-best touch, believing he was closing the gap on the super Spaniard, only to depart his home slam once again as a dejected figure.
"When the results don't come or the scoreline doesn't reflect those improvements, then of course you feel quite deflated," he said.
De Minaur has earmarked a potential tweak of his flat forehand to generate more spin and racquet-head speed to try and match the firepower of Alcaraz (0-6) and two-time defending AO champ Jannik Sinner (0-13), after now losing all 19 encounters with his two nemeses.
Masur, though, hopes the 26-year-old doesn't beat himself up too much, or feel he needs to overhaul his game to compete with the two grand slam juggernauts, who have won the past eight majors between them.
"I thought Alex was awesome last night. Alex is awesome," Masur, a former Australian Open semi-finalist and Australian Davis Cup captain, told AAP on Wednesday.
"It's very hard to just go from A to Z or to say I can flick a switch and I'm going to do this.
"Demon's obviously got high expectations and he's impatient, but he has to take an incremental approach, which he's been doing for years, and he's just got to continue on that path.
"He's got to build that base line and continue to build it. Demon's got a lot of skills too and he's just probably got to explore them."
Respected Australian strategist Craig O'Shannessy is frustrated by de Minaur's dogged refusal to advance his net game.
"The writing was on the wall 12 months ago when Alex lost to Sinner in a very routine fashion here," said O'Shannessy, who helped Novak Djokovic win four grand slam crowns in 2018-19.
"After that loss, the goal should have been to update his game style to become more of an all-court player, to go to the net more and to serve and volley more.
"The problem for Alex is that he needed all these things against Alcaraz, but it's very difficult just to turn the tap on for the match.
"In the last 12 months, it would have been advantageous for him to improve against lower-ranked players that he's going to beat anyway."
There have already been calls for the Spain-based de Minaur to sound out Alcaraz's former coach Juan Carlos Ferrero, who parted ways with the world No.1 last month.
But O'Shannessy doesn't believe the seven-times quarter-finalist needs anyone new in his team to improve his game.
"He absolutely does not need a new coach," the Texas-based analyst said.
"He does not need to beef up anymore. He has enough power to make this things happen.
"What he doesn't have is the deep understanding of Carlos Alcaraz and the game plan to find his weaknesses.
"Every player's got weaknesses. I worked with Novak, I coached against Roger and Rafa as part of that, and all three of them have weaknesses.
"They have parts of the court where they're more uncomfortable, and I just didn't see that last night.
"What was that game plan and how he was going to execute it?
"The things he needed to do well was make a high percentage of first serves to help protect his second serve.
"He only made 55 per cent so just even with that one statistic, the match is over."
