{"id":844160,"date":"2026-08-05T07:58:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T07:58:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/844160\/"},"modified":"2026-08-05T07:58:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T07:58:11","slug":"alex-de-minaur-beats-james-duckworth-at-canadian-open","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/844160\/","title":{"rendered":"Alex de Minaur beats James Duckworth at Canadian Open"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fallen star Alexei Popyrin has dug deep for a morale-boosting victory to join Alex de Minaur in the second round of the Canadian Open in Montreal.<\/p>\n

Two years after upstaging the great Novak Djokovic in a seismic US Open triumph, Popyrin has slumped to number 139 in the world as he battles a crisis of confidence.<\/p>\n

But after toiling through qualifying just to make the main draw, Popyrin toiled for another two hours and 12 minutes to see off Argentine Roman Andres Burruchaga 4-6, 7-5, 6-3 to notch his first ATP-level win since May in the Masters event.<\/p>\n

The breakthrough was only Popyrin’s ninth win of a lean 2026 campaign and vaulted the one-time world number 19 into a second-round contest with US seventh seed Taylor Fritz or another Argentine, Thiago Agustin Tirante.<\/p>\n

ABC Sport Daily podcast<\/a><\/p>\n

ABC Sport Daily is your daily sports conversation. We dive into the biggest story of the day and get you up to speed with everything else that’s making headlines.<\/p>\n

De Minaur, meanwhile, looked to be cruising before fellow Sydneysider James Duckworth put the world number seven through the wringer late on.<\/p>\n

Runner-up in 2023, de Minaur was a set and 3-1 up before Duckworth fought back hard seeking a first win over his countryman in three meetings.<\/p>\n

But de Minaur held firm to fend off six set points and progress 6-2, 7-6 (6) and book a third-round date with either Britain’s Cameron Norrie or Peru’s Ignacio Buse.<\/p>\n

“In the first set everything was flowing,” de Minaur said after the one-hour, 46-minute dogfight.<\/p>\n

“I was up a break, had a couple more chances to go up by a double break and all of a sudden it slips away.<\/p>\n

“Then all of a sudden momentum shifts and we got into a battle. So I am glad I was able to sneak through. There are a couple of things I need to tighten up on, but we live to fight another day.”<\/p>\n

While de Minaur and Popyrin move on, fellow Australian Adam Walton crashed out with a 6-3, 6-4 loss to American Jenson Brooksby.<\/p>\n

In the women’s WTA event in Toronto, Tahlia Gibson continued her stellar 2026 season with an upset 7-5, 6-1 second-round win over Polish 18th seed Maja Chwalinska.<\/p>\n

Gibson’s 28th win of a breakout year earned her a crack at Russian 16th seed Ekaterina Alexandrova.<\/p>\n

AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fallen star Alexei Popyrin has dug deep for a morale-boosting victory to join Alex de Minaur in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":844161,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[18278,38872,64,63,11230,70624,938,588,85,52477,747],"class_list":["post-844160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-alex-de-minaur","tag-alexei-popyrin","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-canadian-open","tag-james-duckworth","tag-montreal","tag-sport","tag-sports","tag-talia-gibson","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844160","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=844160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844160\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/844161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=844160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=844160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=844160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}