He may have been raised on clay and enjoyed his breakthrough performance on hard court, but Australia\u2019s Alex De Minaur believes grass is where he best fortunes may lie.<\/p>\n
The seventh seed in the boys\u2019 singles at Wimbledon sealed a quarterfinal berth on Wednesday at the All England Club, after beating Germany\u2019s Daniel Altmaier 7-6(5) 6-4.<\/p>\n
Due to face highly-rated Canadian third seed Felix Auger-Aliassime \u2013 who came within a whisker\u00a0of winning the junior title at Roland Garros \u2013 in the last eight, De Minaur said he hoped to extend his time in London this week with another victory.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m pretty happy with the way I\u2019m playing throughout Wimbledon,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve had three tough matches, it\u2019s been good to get through not dropping a set. I did go down a set point a couple of matches but it was good to get over the line.<\/p>\n
\u201c(Wimbledon\u2019s) obviously got that prestige \u2026 I\u2019m really\u00a0happy to be in quarterfinals. Really don\u2019t want it to end, so hopefully can keep going.\u201d<\/p>\n
The New South Welshman, 17, spent large portions of his childhood growing up in Spain \u2013 where he currently resides \u2013 honing his crafty yet aggressive game on clay.<\/p>\n
And in 2015, he came to prominence with a run to the semifinals of the US Open boys\u2019 singles event on the quick hard courts of Flushing Meadows.<\/p>\n
He repeated the feat on\u00a0the Plexicushion at Melbourne Park when he advanced to the last four at the Australian Open juniors six months ago.<\/p>\n
De Minaur has shown a predilection for grass, too; prior to Wimbledon he advanced to the semifinals of the junior tune-up event\u00a0in Roehampton.<\/p>\n
He has won seven of his last eight grasscourt matches.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just really happy to be on the grass, my favourite surface and I look forward to this tournament every year,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it (my preference for grass) comes with the way I play, the\u00a0aggressive mindset I\u2019ve got. Ever since I first touched the grass I knew this was going to be my favourite surface.\u201d<\/p>\n
Having played predominantly on the ITF circuit outside of the junior Grand Slams, De Minaur believes the experience he\u2019s accrued against older and more seasoned opponents has benefitted his game for moments such as these at Wimbledon.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe level has always been there; it\u2019s been a little bit of a mental battle to believe that I\u2019m good enough to be where I am. Every result I get helps me develop a little more confidence and be able to put that towards each match,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s obviously\u00a0really good. It\u2019s really tough to play against them. It\u2019s helped me try to not lose focus as\u00a0much. Obviously\u00a0against those big guys, if you lose focus for one point\u00a0it could be the set, could be the\u00a0match. It\u2019s helped me be more concentrated\u00a0each point and try to go out there and win every point I can.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
He may have been raised on clay and enjoyed his breakthrough performance on hard court, but Australia\u2019s Alex De Minaur believes grass is where he best fortunes may lie. The seventh seed in the boys\u2019 singles at Wimbledon sealed a quarterfinal berth on Wednesday at the All England Club, after beating Germany\u2019s Daniel Altmaier 7-6(5) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5788,"featured_media":11886,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5788"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11885\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}