Alex de Minaur has always been one of the quickest players on the ATP Tour, the kind of competitor who can chase down balls that look like clean winners and turn them right back into points he wins. That speed built his career, but it’s not the whole story anymore. Heading into the 2026 US Open, de Minaur is working on something a little different: a hardcourt game with more bite to it.
Rather than relying simply on defense and retrieving shots, he’s begun to move closer to the baseline, hit flatter strokes from the ground, and look to control points instead of surviving them. It is not a dramatic change, but one that has been slowly developing as a result of some tough losses against heavy-hitters and some actual success on fast surfaces. The following will consider the change in his game, where it has appeared during recent hardcourt tournaments, and what it might mean when he takes the court at Flushing Meadows.
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The Ways Alex de Minaur Has Evolved As a Player on Hard Courts
In terms of tactics, there is not much new about the way de Minaur used to play on hard courts. He would try to run around the court and frustrate the other player into making mistakes. It worked well enough to win many matches, but when facing one of the most powerful players on the tour, you cannot play only defensively, because sooner or later someone will take your time off you. So now de Minaur has decided to change his tactics, and has spoken about moving back to the baseline and using more flat shots.
Standing closer to the line means the ball reaches his opponent faster, which cuts down their reaction window and makes it harder for them to load up on big shots. Flatter groundstrokes travel quicker through the court too, which fits naturally with that more front-footed positioning. Together, these changes have made him a genuinely more aggressive hardcourt player, not just a faster one. It’s a tactical evolution rather than a total reinvention, and it reflects a player who’s still adding layers to his game well into his late twenties.
de Minaur’s Momentum Through the US Open Series
These are the tournaments where these changes are tested, and de Minaur has been using them as proving grounds rather than practice games. In the Washington Open, being the defending champion and top seed in the tournament, de Minaur had tough first-round matches against Stefanos Tsitsipas but then comfortably beat Cruz Hewitt, another countryman, reaching the quarter-finals. Following that, de Minaur maintained the form in Montreal’s National Bank Open, where despite winning a tough second-round match against James Duckworth of Australia, he made it to the quarter-final stage in Masters 1000 level.
Cincinnati looms as the next big test before the tour heads to New York, and every match along the US Open Series doubles as both a ranking booster and a rehearsal for Grand Slam conditions. Win or lose in any single match, the pattern that matters most is consistency: de Minaur is stringing together deep runs on hardcourts at a level that matches, and in some stretches exceeds, his career-best form.
Can de Minaur Make a Deep Run at the US Open?
This raises the interesting issue of whether de Minaur will finally be able to overcome his quarterfinal barrier in the Grand Slam tournaments in late August. He has faced this barrier many times in different Grand Slams, including the US Open tournament itself, but reaching the semifinals has always proved to be just out of reach. With a career-best ranking within the world’s top ten and his increasingly powerful hardcourt game, he enters the tournament in Flushing Meadows with a very legitimate claim. De Minaur has always been known for his footwork and defense, which will always make him difficult to crack; but with the ability to go forward and take control, he becomes much more dangerous.
The New York courts have usually favored players who not only know how to prolong their rallies but end them as well, a quality that fits well with the game plan that de Minaur has been perfecting all season long. There is nothing definite about a tournament filled with talented players, but de Minaur will definitely arrive at the Australian Open with as much self-confidence as he has ever had at a hard court Grand Slam in recent memory.