Alex de Minaur has raced into the US Open third round like he had a hot ticket to Broadway.
Australia’s world No.13 dispatched Yibing Wu 6-1 6-2 6-1 in just 86 minutes to storm into the last 32 for the fifth time in seven trips to New York.
A quarter-finalist in 2020, de Minaur loves the faster pace of Flushing Meadows and sped through Thursday’s match in vastly different fashion to his laborious four-set, first-round dogfight against Kazakh qualifier Timofey Skatov.
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Wu is the Chinese giant-killer who not only dumped Nick Kyrgios out of Stuttgart in the grand slam finalist’s premature return from a knee injury this year but also upended Denis Shapovalov and Taylor Fritz en route to the final on Dallas hard courts in February.
But de Minaur broke him seven times, won 82 per cent of his first-serve points and committed a meagre 10 unforced errors in 22 games to join countryman Rinky Hijikata in the last 32.
“Matches are never easy so whenever you get a chance to kind of come away with a win like that, you will take it for sure,” de Minaur said.
“I don’t think he was feeling 100 per cent today. It’s a shame for him but ultimately it is one of those matches I did what I needed to do and happy to be in the next round.
“I was proud of my mental head space the whole match. I was locked in from the very first point until the last and no matter what was happening in the match.
“You always take a drama free match.”
The 13th seed will play either Chile’s world No.25 Nicolas Jarry or 17-year-old American wildcard Alex Michelsen on Sunday (AEST) for a place in the last 16 of the season’s final major.
Fellow Australian Chris O’Connell will look to follow de Minaur and Hijikata into the third round when he faces third-seeded 2021 Open champion Daniil Medvedev later on day four.
Wildcard Hijikata is up against China’s world No.67 Zhizhen Zhang on Friday (Saturday AEST) in his first grand slam third-round appearance.
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