Alcaraz to Face Minaur in 2023 Queen’s  Final

Carlos Alcaraz will face Alex de Minaur in the Queen’s final for the chance to win a first grass title and return to world number one before Wimbledon.

Spanish top seed Alcaraz, 20, swept past American Sebastian Korda 6-3 6-4.

Earlier on Saturday, Australian De Minaur beat Danish second seed Holger Rune 6-3 7-6 (7-2).

A win at the London tournament would lift Alcaraz above Novak Djokovic in the rankings and make him top seed for Wimbledon, which starts on 3 July.

“At the beginning of the week I didn’t know that a good result would put me number one but in the press conference yesterday they told me and I thought ‘oh my god – it’s in my mind, I’m going to go for it’,” Alcaraz said after his win over Korda.

Lifting the Queen’s trophy would be quite an achievement for someone playing only their third tournament on grass, with this the Spaniard’s first final on the surface.

“I’m getting better, feeling better every match and right now I feel like I’ve played for 10 years on grass,” Alcaraz said.

“I didn’t expect to adapt my movement and my game so fast on grass and I’m really happy with that.”

Since losing the opening set in the first round, Alcaraz has looked slick at the tournament and broke Korda’s serve twice in the opening set on Saturday, making just one unforced error in the set to take a dominant lead.

He went an early break ahead in the second and proceeded to curry favour with the London crowd when he hit three outstanding returns over 90mph to break Korda for a second time and go on to serve out the match.