Alex de Minaur<\/a> stressed that each ball used at the tournament leading up to the American Grand Slam was different.<\/p>\nBut he expressed his happiness with the balls and conditions at the US Open and he aims to make the most of them.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think by far this is the easiest conditions to play in over the hard court swing,\u201d De Minaur told reporters. \u201cI mean, don\u2019t ask me why or how, but the balls have played completely differently in every event in the lead up.<\/p>\n
\u201cHere it actually feels normal. A lot of the players are scratching their heads because we don\u2019t understand how we have played with this ball at the US Open and we have never felt that it\u2019s uncontrollable or we can\u2019t feel the ball in the strings.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut in the lead up tournaments you could have asked any player in the draw and they would have had the same feelings.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo for me it feels great to be here. It feels like comfortable conditions, it\u2019s obviously quick and skiddy but I have always enjoyed it.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Alex](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/GettyImages-2232265864-1024x683.jpg\")
Photo by Clive Brunskill\/Getty ImagesAlex de Minaur defeats fellow Australian to reach US Open second round<\/p>\n
De Minaur opened his campaign with a victory over his compatriot Christopher O\u2019Connell.<\/p>\n
The pair were due to play one another for the first time in Toronto, but O\u2019Connell was unable to compete.<\/p>\n
In New York, the eighth seed did not face a break point on the way to clinching a 6-3, 6-4, 6-4 victory and advancing to round two, where he will play qualifier Shintaro Mochizuki.<\/p>\n
With that victory, De Minaur has now surpassed former world number one Pat Rafter with 213 wins by an Australian on hard courts. <\/p>\n
He is now behind two-time Grand Slam champion Lleyton Hewitt<\/a>, who has 372 hard court victories to his name, more than any other Australian player.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alex de Minaur is safely through to the second round of the US Open. The 26-year-old arrived in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":101124,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[25854,49,48,82,593,2084],"class_list":{"0":"post-101123","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-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-tennis","13":"tag-us-open"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101123\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Alex](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/GettyImages-2232267747-1-1024x683.jpg\")
Photo by Clive Brunskill\/Getty ImagesAlex de Minaur says he likes the US Open balls and court conditions<\/p>\n