Alex de Minaur faces rising star Alexander Blockx in second-round showdown
This is where things get interesting for Alex de Minaur.
Australia’s top 10 torchbearer extended his unbeaten run in the grand slam first round to 16 tournaments with a 6-4, 6-4, 6-2 win over British qualifier Toby Samuel at Roland-Garros on Monday night (AEST) and booked his first serious test of what he hopes will be a long stay.
Next up is 21-year-old Belgian Alexander Blockx, one of the tour’s rising stars. The powerful player, former junior world No. 1, is having his breakthrough season at the highest level.
Blockx, who won his first round match in straight sets on Sunday night, barely missed seeding for the clay court major following his semi-final run at the Madrid Masters and poses a major threat to de Minaur.
De Minaur had reached the same stage in the French capital 12 months earlier, but revealed his battle with burnout after shockingly blowing a two-set lead over Kazakh Alexander Bublik.
It remains the 27-year-old’s worst grand slam result since losing to Matteo Berrettini in the second round at Wimbledon three years ago.
De Minaur has since become one of the tour’s most consistently excellent performers; this includes reaching one of the seven major quarter-finals at Roland-Garros in 2024. However, this proved to be his least successful slam, losing eight of his nine outings in the second round or earlier.
This means the world No. 9 player has the opportunity to pick up some points against his rivals and, if things go well, potentially finish this fortnight with a career-high top-five finish.
De Minaur doesn’t use the same poor topspin as some of his peers as part of his struggles on red clay, but he has developed a drop shot that is more than useful in high rotation against Samuel.
But their match was a soft opening for “Demon”, who became the first player to advance in under eight minutes on the second day on a hot Paris day that exceeded 30 degrees.
The 159th-ranked Englishman, who had never faced an opponent ranked in the top 100, let alone a single-digit ranking, then played against de Minaur, who fielded 14th and returned to form with a semi-final run after accepting a late wildcard in Hamburg last week.
He had lost three consecutive matches on clay before his campaign in Hamburg and had lost seven of 11 matches in total since winning the Rotterdam title against Canadian Felix Auger-Aliassime in February.
De Minaur wasn’t perfect against Samuel and had to dig himself out of a 0-2 hole in the second set, but he quickly seized that break and was otherwise largely untroubled moving into the second round.
Samuel surprised de Minaur with big strikes early in the contest and finished his work at the net while serving in the first four games.
But as the No. 8 seed settled in and found his range, Samuel found it increasingly difficult to appear in rallies. She pulled her backhand wide in a rash attempt to drop serve for the winner in the fifth game, and that was all Minaur needed to eventually take a one-set lead.
Samuel quickly found a break point in the second set, but wriggled away and then took advantage of an unusually loose de Minaur service game to break the Australian for the only time in the match.
Back-to-back forehand errors put Minaur in trouble, then Samuel made a huge comeback that proved irreversible. Any chance of a mid-match change quickly disappeared as De Minaur produced a sharp comeback game that ended with a fierce forehand that landed near Samuel’s feet in the service box, securing the comeback.
This was the type of point that made the difference between the two.
De Minaur’s controlled aggression, combined with his opponent’s rock-of-Gibraltar defense not often seen on the Challenger circuit, proved too much for the inexperienced Samuel, who looked like he had to play beyond his means to try to win points.
Another break in the seventh game was the beginning of the end for Samuel, who showed that he could soon be knocking on the door of the top 100.
But for de Minaur this was little more than an adjustment as he made 17 fewer unforced errors while making 27 wins to Samuel’s 19. He has few positive memories on the clay courts of Roland-Garros and will look to add more as he continues his campaign against Blockx.
The Aussies got off to a solid start on Sunday night with James Duckworth winning, then Daria Kasatkina joined her and de Minaur defeated Zeynep Sönmez 6-4, 6-4 in the next round.
Unlike De Minaur, Roland-Garros has been a happy hunting ground for Kasatkina; This includes reaching the semi-finals in 2022 and reaching at least the fourth round on three other occasions. But four-time champion Iga Swiatek eliminated Gold Coast teenager Emerson Jones 6-1, 6-2 within the hour.
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