Frenchman Arthur Cazaux entered the Australian Open ranked 122, fresh off the Challenger Tour and a title at the Open Nouvelle-Calédonie. But after one week of play in Melbourne, he not only won his first Major tournament match win, but also took down 8-seeded Holger Rune. He would follow that up with a victory against 28-seeded Tallon Griekspoor. He will face another seed in Hubert Hurkacz next. In his last two matches, Cazaux has only dropped one set combined.

Cazaux has advanced behind the strength of his serve. In his win against Rune, he fired 18 aces and won 82 percent of his first serve points. He has 43 aces thus far in the tournament.
He enters the match against the 9 seed with a wave of confidence. “I knew I could play at this kind of level, but I’ve never proved it in a real match. I was confident in myself but to prove it in the first round gave me more confidence and now I know I can beat these top players, during real matches.”

Photo: AFP

After his work in Melbourne thus far, Cazaux has seen his ranking soar to 83rd in the world. He has moved up nearly 300 spots in the rankings in the last year. A year ago at this time, he was ranked world no. 382.

If he hopes to continue his journey, he will need to conquer another big server in Hurkacz, who has popped serves over 150 mph. The winner of that match will face the winner of the Daniil Medvedev-Nuno Borges round-of-16 match.