Alex de Minaur has played some amazing tennis on hard courts this year, and it translated to his first clay match as he downed former Monte-Carlo Masters champion Stan Wawrinka.
The Australian has been particularly good this year, making his way to the Top 10 after some amazing time in Mexico. It does seem like he's taken a step forward this year, and clay tennis didn't bring anything different.
It's a surface he's worked on in the past few years and improved significantly, showing some of that against Wawrinka. The Swiss player has always been a tremendous player on clay.
He's a past champion in Monte Carlo and also Roland Garros, which shows how good he can play. Obviously, he's not on the same level anymore, but he still gave de Minaur some minor problems.
Most of those troubles happened in the opening set. He played pretty well, albeit he struggled with his serve a lot. Without good serving on clay, players often run into problems.
That's what de Minaur used to his advantage, giving Wawrinka a lot of problems when he served, breaking him three times. He would get broken himself once, but that was still enough for the 6-3 opening set.
The problems became bigger for the former champion in the second set as de Minaur was now in full control. The Australian broke early for the 3-0 lead and then added a break later on to make it 5-0.
Wawrinka did serve a bit better, but it didn't matter because, in the rallies, the Australian reigned supreme. He was consistent and minimized his errors compared to his opponent, who kept spraying one after another.
Lastly, he finished with 24 unforced errors in 15 games of play, which is more than one per game. That's too much against a Top 15 player. The final score was 6-3, 6-0.
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