Alex de Minaur broke serve once on Thursday, and he only got the chance because he had just been broken himself. That exchange in the middle of the second set was the closest the No. 6 seed came to a foothold. Botic van de Zandschulp broke him five times in all and put him out of the US Open 6-4, 7-5, 6-2 in two hours and 43 minutes on the Grandstand.
A single break settled the opening set. In the second, van de Zandschulp broke for 4-3, de Minaur broke straight back for 4-4, and then the Australian served at 5-6 to stay in the set and lost his serve again. Two more breaks in the third finished it. De Minaur converted one of five break points across the afternoon. Van de Zandschulp took five of eleven.
What kept de Minaur out of those service games was the Dutchman’s first delivery. Van de Zandschulp won 46 of the 60 points he played behind it, and split his 44 second-serve points down the middle — a comfortable afternoon against a man whose whole method is to make opponents hit one more ball. “I think that was the difference today,” van de Zandschulp said of his serving.
De Minaur made 30 unforced errors against 23 winners. He had beaten van de Zandschulp in all four of their previous meetings, most recently in the Rotterdam quarterfinals in February, and he offered no complicated account of Thursday afterwards. “My level today wasn’t good enough. It’s pretty straightforward,” he said, adding that the feel of the ball on the strings had not been there.
Van de Zandschulp is 30 years old and has never won an ATP Tour title. He has reached two tour finals and lost both, squandering four championship points in the second of them. What he has instead of a trophy cabinet is a list of names.
He came through qualifying at all four majors in 2021 and reached the US Open quarterfinals that year, beating Casper Ruud and Diego Schwartzman on the way, and he was the only man to take a set off Daniil Medvedev during the Russian’s title run. In 2024 he knocked Carlos Alcaraz out in the second round here. Later that year he beat Rafael Nadal in the Davis Cup tie that ended Nadal’s career. Four weeks ago in Montreal he beat Medvedev again. Thursday he added de Minaur.
The result lands harder on the Australian as De Minaur has reached the quarterfinals at all four majors and gone no further at any of them, and this was his earliest exit in New York in five years. It came in a men’s draw that has been shedding seeds since Sunday — Novak Djokovic, Felix Auger-Aliassime, Arthur Fils, Rafael Jodar, Brandon Nakashima and Lorenzo Musetti have all gone before the third round — which is the kind of fortnight a player in his position waits for.
He was not inclined to sit with it. Everyone loses matches, he said, and everyone has days they would like back. Van de Zandschulp goes into the third round ranked 70th, still without a tour title, and still in the tournament.
