{"id":834699,"date":"2026-07-31T02:17:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T02:17:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/834699\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T02:17:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T02:17:09","slug":"alex-de-minaur-beats-cruz-hewitt-in-all-australian-clash-at-the-dc-open","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/834699\/","title":{"rendered":"Alex de Minaur beats Cruz Hewitt in all-Australian clash at the DC Open"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alex de Minaur has cast aside sentiment to end Cruz Hewitt’s breakout run and storm into the Washington Open quarter-finals.<\/p>\n

The top seed and defending champion produced a clinical display to defeat the 17-year-old Hewitt, son of former world number one Lleyton, 6-2, 6-3 in just 61 minutes.<\/p>\n

De Minaur shared a warm embrace with Hewitt at the net as Lleyton looked on from the stands at Stadium Court.<\/p>\n

“It was definitely weird,” de Minaur said.<\/p>\n

“I knew I was going to play him on the tour some day, but I didn’t actually expect it to be this week. It was an amazing feeling.”<\/p>\n

Cruz Hewitt has breakthrough Tour win<\/a><\/p>\n

Cruz Hewitt wins for the first time at ATP Tour level, his Washington upset of former world number 37 Marcus Giron set to rocket him up the tennis rankings.<\/p>\n

A Wimbledon boys’ finalist this month, Hewitt idolised de Minaur while growing up around the Davis Cup team captained by his father.<\/p>\n

“Even [with] all the lead-up, seeing all the incredible pictures that we have together and how we’ve grown up, I’m glad I managed to get through,” de Minaur said.<\/p>\n

“But I’m sure we’re going to have many battles in the years to come.”<\/p>\n

Australia’s world number six charged to the net with authority and displayed great hands en route to improving his win-loss record to 29-14 this season.<\/p>\n

Despite his defeat, Hewitt is set to soar some 252 spots in the rankings to a fresh career high of about world number 360 after qualifying in Washington and then winning his maiden ATP match.<\/p>\n

Competing for the first time since marrying British WTA star Katie Boulter this month, de Minaur next faces American Brandon Nakashima, who ousted seventh-seed Jakub Mensik 7-6 (5), 3-6, 6-4 to reach his second consecutive Washington quarter-final.<\/p>\n

Nakashima holds a 2-1 edge over the Australian, with de Minaur’s lone win against the American also coming in last year’s quarter-finals before he went on to lift the title.<\/p>\n

AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alex de Minaur has cast aside sentiment to end Cruz Hewitt’s breakout run and storm into the Washington…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":834700,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[18278,753,64,63,169020,11548,37660,32119,588,85,747],"class_list":["post-834699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-alex-de-minaur","tag-atp","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cruz-hewitt","tag-dc-open","tag-lleyton-hewitt","tag-round-of-16","tag-sport","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834699","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=834699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834699\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/834700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=834699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=834699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=834699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}