De Minaur gets qualifier in US Open first round<\/a><\/p>\nAlex de Minaur appears to have a kind draw for the year’s final grand slam, but Australia’s perennial hope will face a precociously formidable obstacle if he wants to make it to the quarterfinals for the third straight year.<\/p>\n
Hunter did not do it easily, taking out compatriot and great mate Maddison Inglis in her first match, fending off two match points in her second and waiting through a 24-hour weather delay to advance with a third straight sudden-death victory.<\/p>\n
“This is the last slam on my list to tick off to get through qualies and coming in I hadn’t played many singles matches in the last few months so, yeah, it feels amazing,” Hunter said.<\/p>\n
Having missed more than a year after rupturing an Achilles tendon, Hunter is back in the Flushing Meadows main draw for a first time since 2023.<\/p>\n
Her “reward” is a first-round tussle on day one with the 11th-seeded Kostyuk, who is coming off charges to the last four at both Roland Garros and the All England Club.<\/p>\n
“Yeah, it’s tough,” said the one-time world number one doubles ace.<\/p>\n
“She’s obviously having a really good year. She’s a great player, very physical with the way she plays and a really good competitor.<\/p>\n
“So it’s going to be tough. Obviously a very quick turnaround from playing qualifiers to my first round tomorrow, but I’m feeling good and she’s the one who’s under all the pressure to play against me and I have practised with her before.<\/p>\n
“I know what her level is and I know it’s going to be a challenge, but I’m up for a challenge. It’s going to be fun. I’m going to enjoy it.<\/p>\n
“There’s been lots of times in my career I didn’t think I’d be back playing at this level, so to be back in the main draw of a slam is awesome, and I’m just going to go out and enjoy it and give it a good crack.”<\/p>\n
Hunter is among six Australians playing on Monday.<\/p>\n
Kim Birrell faces Petra Marcinko, Talia Gibson also plays a Croatian in veteran Donna Vekic and fellow rising star Taylah Preston takes on American Alycia Parks.<\/p>\n
Adam Walton, up against China’s Yibing Wu, and Aleksandar Vukic playing Japan’s Rei Sakamoto are the only Aussie men in first-round action.<\/p>\n
Sixth seed Alex de Minaur opens his campaign on Tuesday (Wednesday AEST).<\/p>\n
AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There is a very good reason why facing big-hitting French Open and Wimbledon semifinalist Marta Kostyuk in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":873217,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,1806,1025,85,93443,747,1751],"class_list":["post-873216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-grand-slam","tag-new-york","tag-sports","tag-storm-hunter","tag-tennis","tag-us-open"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873216","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=873216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/873217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=873216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=873216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=873216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}