ATP Tour

How De Minaur's 43 hard-court wins all added up to be a chart-topper

During the Australian Open, ATPTour.com will bring fans insight into the leaders of key statistical categories, showing how performances throughout 2025 all added up to successful seasons and the promise of more good times ahead in 2026.

Australian Alex de Minaur was a force on hard courts in 2025, tallying a tour-leading 43 wins and smashing his previous benchmarks on the surface.

One of the fastest players on Tour, De Minaur suffocates his opponents from the baseline with his blistering court coverage, squeaky-clean ballstriking and his relentless tenacity. His grit was on full display at the ATP 500 in Washington, D.C., where he dramatically saved three championship points to edge Alejandro Davidovich Fokina.

Speaking after his first-round win at the Australian Open, De Minaur said that two tactics to take time away from opponents have underpinned his success on hard courts: flat groundstrokes and playing close to the baseline.

“My shots on both sides are on the flatter side, which means that the ball kind of skids through when it hits the court… if the ball is coming back to your opponent quicker and quicker, it's not really allowing him to think most of the time,” De Minaur said.

“I have always felt that I have been able to use my speed to retrieve and play defensive, but one of the biggest things that has helped me take that next step is use my speed to take time away from my opponents and that's where court positioning is super important.

“It's much harder than if I'm a couple meters behind the baseline, and then my ball is slow and loopy and my opponent has all the time in the world to generate and hit winners past me, especially with the way the guys are hitting the ball nowadays. When they've got time, they are crunching the ball. So I'm doing my best not to give my opponents time."

De Minaur's Hard-Court Record, Past Three Seasons

De Minaur’s triumph in Washington, D.C. marked his 10th tour-level title, eight of which have come on hard courts. Among his other standout hard-court results in 2025, the 26-year-old reached the quarter-finals at both the Australian Open and US Open. He was a finalist in Rotterdam and a semi-finalist in Beijing and Vienna.

While De Minaur recorded the most hard-court match wins last season, Jannik Sinner boasted the highest winning percentage on the surface (92.9 per cent, 39-3 match record). Sinner won five of his six titles in 2025 on hard courts, including the Australian Open and the Nitto ATP Finals in his home country Italy. De Minaur was fifth in hard-court winning percentage last season behind Sinner, Carlos Alcaraz, Novak Djokovic and Felix Auger-Aliassime.

2025 Hard-Court Winning Percentage

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