Australian teenager Alex De Minaur has played the game of his life at the Sydney International, upsetting top-50 player Benoit Paire to claim his maiden ATP tour win.

    Ranked 287 places below the world No.46, De Minaur showed why he was rated one of the country’s brightest prospects, outlasting the Frenchman 6-3 3-6 7-6 (7-1) yesterday at Homebush.

    “I wasn’t really going to push myself too hard for results these couple of weeks but, well, the results I have been getting, I couldn’t be any happier,” he said yesterday.

    Just last week, the 17-year-old, who was born in Sydney but based in Spain, dazzled fans at the Brisbane International with shock qualifying wins over 2015 Sydney finalist Mikhail Kukushkin and American young gun Frances Tiafoe.

    And while he went down to Mischa Zverev on his tour tournament debut, he wasted no time getting his first ATP win of his burgeoning career with an impressive showing in his hometown.

    “I told myself that I was going to have some opportunities in the match. I thought that I was getting on his serve quite often,” De Minaur said.

    “I just thought to myself that one of these games, he was going to have a cheap game, where he was going to have a couple of loose errors. I was glad I was able to take that opportunity.”

    A junior Wimbledon finalist last year, De Minaur received some invaluable Davis Cup experience in September alongside captain Lleyton Hewitt, Nick Kyrgios and Bernard Tomic.

    De Minaur’s round-two match-up will be Andrey Kuznetsov, who has progressed after the retirement of seventh seed Martin Klizan, while trailing 3-0 in the deciding third set.

    (SD-Agencies)