De Minaur served up another clinical display on Saturday to make the championship match in the Dutch indoor event for the second-straight year, while bringing a nightmarish conclusion to a dreamy week for Italian Mattia Bellucci.
The world No.8, who lost last year's final to Jannik Sinner, has given himself another chance to become the only Australian apart from Lleyton Hewitt in 2004 to triumph in Rotterdam as he blitzed his way to a 6-1 6-2 victory in just 67 minutes.
So much for the good news.
The bad news for de Minaur is that after an apparent armchair ride to the final, having beaten three opponents all ranked higher than No.47, he'll now been thrown in with on-song world No.3 Alcaraz.
Top seed Alcaraz hit some dazzling peaks in beating Hubert Hurkacz 6-4 6-7 (5-7) 6-3 on Saturday night.
After prevailing in a really high-quality match, the Wimbledon and French Open champion declared himself ready for "another war" against de Minaur, who he's beaten in their previous two encounters.
And though de Minaur reckoned he had played his best match of the week against Bellucci, his low-key demeanour and references to having had "a tough week" suggested he might be harbouring another physical ailment.
However, it certainly didn't look that way at the Rotterdam Ahoy arena as he tackled world no.92 Bellucci, who had enjoyed a "life-changing week" by battling through qualifying to take out both second seed Daniil Medvedev and sixth seed Stefanos Tsitsipas.
But third seed de Minaur proved a step too far for the 23-year-old left-hander who, at the end of a draining week, was taken to school.
"More than anything, I just show up every day and put my head down. I do my best every time I step out on court. I try, I try to win every point I can, and I've ended up having a couple of good weeks in a row," shrugged de Minaur, who had helped Australia win their Davis Cup qualifying tie in Sweden last week.
"And hopefully now I can do one better than last year."
De Minaur has only dropped serve once over what must have felt a cathartic week for him in his first individual tournament since being hammered by Sinner in the quarter-final of his home Australian Open.
He was in no mood to give Bellucci any breathing room, offering up his familiar study in perpetual motion to subdue the lively Italian showman, who had quickly got the crowd on his side by producing a spectacular tweener winner to cap a brilliant rally in the very first game.
"He's played with so much confidence this whole week and played some incredible tennis," said De Minaur.
"I was able to really analyse his matches and see maybe a couple areas where I could hurt him and maybe he wasn't as comfortable.
"I knew he was going to come out and play very loose and full of confidence. So I thought if I could get on top of him early, then that would kind of open up the match.
"I just had to do my best to stay with him early and see if I could get my chances."
De Minaur quickly wore Bellucci down, eventually breaking his serve four times on his way to becoming the first man this year to win 11 matches on tour.
The Sinner loss in Melbourne remains his only defeat as he homes in on a 10th ATP Tour triumph.
