Alex de Minaur defeats Casper Ruud to win Acapulco title for second year in a row

A year ago, Alex de Minaur captured the biggest title of his career in Acapulco—and this year he repeated the feat.

The Australian capped another dream week at the ATP 500 event on Saturday night, defeating former No. 2 Casper Ruud, 6-4, 6-4, to win the title for the second year in a row.

He’s just the fourth man in the tournament’s 31-year history to win the title in back-to-back years, and the first to achieve the feat since it switched from clay to hard courts in 2014.

MEN TO WIN ACAPULCO IN BACK-TO-BACK YEARS:
~ Thomas Muster [1993-1996]
~ Nicolas Almagro [2008-2009]
~ David Ferrer [2010-2012]
~ Alex de Minaur [2023-2024]

This is also the first time De Minaur has won any ATP event in back-to-back years. It’s the eighth overall ATP title of his career—in addition to his two ATP 500 titles in Acapulco, he also has six ATP 250 crowns at Sydney, Atlanta and Zhuhai in 2019, Antalya and Eastbourne in 2021 and Atlanta in 2022.

After De Minaur broke in the third game of Saturday’s final and rode that break to take a hard-fought 52-minute first set, Ruud—who was going for his first ATP 500 title—struck back, breaking for a 2-0 lead in the second set and going up 40-15 in the next game. But De Minaur won the next four points in a row to get the break back, eventually broke one more time in the seventh game of the second set and held from there until he had the one-hour, 57-minute victory.

“It’s been an amazing week,” De Minaur told ATPTour.com. “Probably a week I didn’t really expect if I’m honest. I came into Mexico not feeling my best and just kept on telling myself to keep giving myself chances. I think today I played my best match of the tournament, so I'm extremely happy with that.”

De Minaur is now on a 10-match winning streak in Acapulco, and will head into Indian Wells at No. 10 on the ATP rankings.

Despite falling in the final, it was still a fantastic week for Ruud—he reached the milestone 20th ATP final of his career in Acapulco, and his first ATP 500 final. He’s now reached at least one final at every level of tour-level event—ATP 250, ATP 500, ATP Masters 1000, ATP Finals and Grand Slam.

The former No. 2 will also return to the Top 10 for the first time since mid-November, rising from No. 11 to No. 9 on Monday.