Mexican Open: De Minaur through to final after late-night battle with cramping Rune

Australian Alex de Minaur, the No 8 seed, beat Dane Holger Rune, the No 4 seed, 3-6, 7-5, 6-2 to move into the final of the Mexican Open at the Princess Mundo Imperial in Acapulco in a match that ran over into the early hours of Saturday morning – finishing just before 3am there.

De Minaur, ranked No 22, will face No 7 seed Tommy Paul next in what will be his 11th ATP final.

Like Paul and his opponent Taylor Fritz in the earlier semi-final, Rune also suffered physically, cramping visibly from the start of the third set.

Certainly as the fourth seed Rune might have been the favourite going into the match, but his failure to get a break of serve in the second set elongated the match beyond what was comfortable for him.

He tried plenty of tactics to get back into the match as de Minaur outlasted him – including an underarm serve at 3-0 in the third – but although retirement might have been the obvious option, he may have been reluctant after having to pull out of his match against Gijs Brouwer in Rotterdam last week.

The statistics tell a little of the match’s story – de Minaur hit 26 unforced errors compared to Rune’s 57 (although the Australian did serve ten double-faults), but he also managed only 15 winners compared to his opponent’s 38.

The Australian won against Mexican wildcard Rodrigo Pacheco Mendez (6-1, 6-2), Italian qualifier Jacopo Berrettini (6-1, 6-0) and Japanese qualifier Taro Daniel (6-2, 6-2) ahead of his victory.

In the previous rounds of the Acapulco Open, Rune, ranked No 10, defeated American wildcard Ben Shelton (6-7 (7), 6-4, 6-2), Portuguese Nuno Borges (6-0, 6-2) and Italian Matteo Berrettini (6-0, 1-0 ret.).

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Acapulco ATP500, other semi-final result (Princess Mundo Imperial, hard, USD 2.013.940):

• Tommy Paul beat Taylor Fritz (3): 6-3, 6-7 (2), 7-6 (2)