A pumped-up Alex de Minaur is through to the semifinals of the Washington Open after a morale-boosting victory over Brandon Nakashima.<\/p>\n
The number seven seed let out an emotional roar after triumphing 6-4, 6-4 against the local favourite at John A Harris Grandstand on Friday.<\/p>\n
De Minaur dished out six aces in the win over the number 14 seed. He won 67 per cent of points on his first serve and 64 per cent on second.<\/p>\n
The 26-year-old from Sydney faced a break point while serving for the match but then nailed a backhand volley to level the game, before advancing in 95 minutes.<\/p>\n
De Minaur will now meet Frenchman Corentin Moutet for a place in the final, where Ben Shelton or the winner of number one seed Taylor Fritz and number 12 Alejandro Davidovich Fokina awaits.<\/p>\n
Earlier, Moutet put paid to the hopes of eighth seed Daniil Medvedev, winning 1-6, 6-4, 6-4.<\/p>\n
Medvedev loves playing on hard courts, and in particular the US Open, and his loss was an upset, with the grand slam just a month away.<\/p>\n
He has reached six grand slam finals in his career \u2014 all on hard courts.<\/p>\n
“Usually, this is the most important part of the season for me,” Medvedev said after the loss.<\/p>\n
“And this year, it’s really important for me because I didn’t have the best year. I had a lot of time after Wimbledon, so I’m feeling ready and I feel in good shape.”<\/p>\n
Number four seed Shelton eliminated number six Frances Tiafoe in an all-American affair, winning 7-6 (7\/2), 6-4.<\/p>\n
Shelton hurled down nine aces to Tiafoe’s eight in the closely fought contest.<\/p>\n
AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A pumped-up Alex de Minaur is through to the semifinals of the Washington Open after a morale-boosting victory…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22822,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[18278,64,63,22959,22960,85,747,10971],"class_list":{"0":"post-22821","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-alex-de-minaur","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-brandon-nakashima","12":"tag-daniil-medvedev","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-tennis","15":"tag-washington-open"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22821\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}