Stefanos Tsitsipas has been quite dominant against Alex de Minaur in the past, and he wasn't much more merciful at the 2024 Italian Open in Rome.
Tsitsipas and de Minaur played 11 times before this match, and the Greek player won 10 of those. In fact, the only time de Minaur won was earlier this year in Mexico. It's 11-1 as of this match because Tsitsipas crushed de Minaur in Rome.
Still, it is a surprising result due to many things, mostly de Minaur's own improved play on clay. Tsitispas has always been the better player on clay, but his form dipped a little bit after the Monte-Carlo Masters trophy run.
He's three weeks removed from good tennis on clay as it came at the Barcelona Open, but this match was just exquisite. It didn't feature any of the trouble it had in some previous matches, especially early on when he went up 3-0.
The difference was how they both played from the baseline because Tsitsipas was spectacular, hitting 8 winners compared to only 1 by de Minaur. The Australian has been looking to play a bit more aggressively recently, but it doesn't come naturally to him on clay.
He'll get there eventually, but today, he was just a bit too timid. Another thing that went the way of Tsitsipas was the serve. He served well, neutralizing any hope of pressure from de Minaur.
Any shallow balls were immediately punished, and it was just a very confident display from the Greek. We haven't really seen him get to that level often in recent times, and if he keeps this going, he could certainly grab this trophy in the absence of Carlos Alcaraz, Jannik Sinner, and Novak Djokovic.
He didn't let up in the second set, taking an early lead and cruising to the finish line. The final score was 6-1, 6-2 as he moved on to the quarter-finals of the ATP Masters 1000 tournament.