Sebastian Korda ousts Alex de Minaur in Wimbledon debut

At age 20, Sebastian Korda is improving his game and is looking to be one of the future stars of American tennis. He finds himself in the Top 50 for the first time in his career and has been making a steady rise up the ATP Rankings since his fourth round appearance at the 2020 French Open.

Prior to Tuesday, Korda never played in a main draw or qualifying match at Wimbledon. He faced Australian Alex de Minaur in the first round and secured an upset win over the 15th seed in four sets, 6-3, 6-4, 6-7, 7-6, earning his first ever win at the major.

It appeared de Minaur would ride the wave of momentum from winning the Eastbourne International event last week but that was not the case. The four match wins from his previous tournament appeared to still be in his legs and played a big factor into his slow start as he lost the first two sets.

Both players found themselves down a break of serve in the fourth set. De Minaur was down a break at 3-1 and Korda at 4-3. Korda gained a 6-3 lead in the fourth-set tiebreaker and held on to win the tiebreaker 7-5.

Korda came into the event on almost ten days of rest, versus de Minaur’s two, and played a much more offensive match compared to his counterpart. Even though he had 49 unforced errors, Korda was still able to rack up 44 winners. The aggressiveness of play led him to have 19 break point chances, converting on four of those opportunities.

Korda was also better on serve in this match. He won 76 percent of points on the first serve, 59 percent on the second serve and only recorded four double faults, all of which were better than de Minaur’s numbers.

Up next is a match against the winner of Zhizhen Zhang (CHN) and Antoine Hoang (FRA). Both are qualifiers and are making their Wimbledon main draw debuts, just like Korda. Korda should be a heavy favorite against whoever wins that match.

Stats courtesy of IBM SlamTracker