With a potential spot at the Nitto ATP Finals looming in the background, Alex de Minaur and Felix Auger-Aliassime are showing no sign of taking their eyes off the ball at the Rolex Shanghai Masters.
The duo on Monday each maintained their respective fast starts to the Chinese ATP Masters 1000 with a commanding straight-sets third-round win. The seventh-seeded De Minaur eased past Kamil Majchrzak 6-1, 7-5 in humid conditions, while 12th seed Auger-Aliassime sank Jesper de Jong 6-4, 7-5. Neither De Minaur nor Auger-Aliassime has dropped a set across their opening two rounds in Shanghai.
Mr. Consistent 😎@alexdeminaur books his seventh ATP Masters 1000 fourth round of the season with a 6-1 7-5 win over Majchrzak.@SH_RolexMasters | #RolexShanghaiMasters pic.twitter.com/uWgdE8yGe5
— ATP Tour (@atptour) October 6, 2025
The 26-year-old De Minaur broke Majchrzak’s serve five times en route to his Tour-leading 36th win on hard courts in 2025, with two of those breaks coming after he had dropped serve himself to fall 3-4 behind in the second set. The Australian is seventh in the PIF ATP Live Race To Turin and remains well placed to qualify for the Nitto ATP Finals for the second consecutive year.
“I came into this week knowing how tough the conditions were going to be,” said De Minaur after his one-hour, 27-minute victory. “So the mindset ultimately is surviving, finding ways, and getting ready for battles every time you step out on the court. There is no such thing as easy matches, especially in these conditions, so I’m glad I was able to compose myself in the second set, get the break back, and finish it off in two. If we had gone into a third, it would have been very physical.”
De Minaur will take on Nuno Borges in the fourth round. The Portuguese ended home #NextGenATP star Shang Juncheng’s run with a 7-6(5), 4-6, 6-3 triumph to reach the fourth round at a Masters 1000 for the fourth time in his career, and for the second time on hard courts after Montreal 2024. Should De Minaur defeat Borges in the pair’s maiden Lexus ATP Head2Head clash, he will hit 50 tour-level wins in a single season for the first time.
Auger-Aliassime also enjoyed a good day on return in China, where he converted three of four break points he earned against De Jong. The Canadian, who was helped to his feet by a ball kid after slipping in the second set, also won 77 per cent (30/39) of points behind his first serve, according to Infosys ATP Stats.
Now 10-2 since the start of August (with both defeats in that tally coming at the hands of Jannik Sinner), Auger-Aliassime will face eighth seed Lorenzo Musetti or 26th seed Luciano Darderi for a quarter-final spot. The 25-year-old is 10th in the Live Race, just 580 points behind eighth-placed Musetti, as he seeks a Nitto ATP Finals return following his 2022 debut.
