No. 3 seed Carlos Alcaraz breezed past Yoshihito Nishioka 6-0, 6-1, 6-4 in 81 minutes Wednesday to march into the third round of the Australian Open.
Alcaraz, winner of last year’s French Open and Wimbledon, got off to a blistering start and never looked back, winning the first nine games before Nishioka could even get on the board.
It marked the shortest completed men’s match at this year’s tournament by 15 minutes.
“The less time you spend on the court in the Grand Slams, especially at the beginning of the tournament, it’s gonna be better, especially physically,” Alcaraz said. “I just try to be focused on spending as less time as I can,” on court.
Alcaraz worked on making his serve more potent in the offseason and was thrilled with how it held up against Nishioka. He racked up 14 aces and three double-faults without giving Nishioka a single break point chance.
“I’m really happy with the serve today, it’s something that I worked on,” he said. “I wasn’t too happy with the serve in the first round.”
He won 32 of 36 first serve points (89%), his highest percentage of first serve points won in any major match in his career.
Alcaraz will play unseeded Nuno Borges — who knocked out Australian 27th seed Jordan Thompson 6-3, 6-2, 6-4 — for a place in the fourth round at Melbourne Park, where he reached the quarterfinals last year, his best finish at the major.
Winning the title would make him the youngest man to complete the career Slam, having already won Wimbledon (twice), the French Open and US Open.
Eight players have achieved the milestone.
“That’s one of the reasons I really want to win this tournament one day, just to put my name on that short list,” he said. “Hopefully [it’s] this year.”
Meanwhile, on Rod Laver Arena, Novak Djokovic was playing in his 430th career Grand Slam singles match, passing Roger Federer for most in the Open Era.
ESPN Research, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
