Indian Wells, CA, USA, 12 March 2018 | tennis.com.au

Juan Martin del Potro overpowered Alex De Minaur on Sunday night to reach the third round of the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells.

The Argentine beat the Aussie wildcard 6-2 6-1 in 69 minutes to set up a clash with former world No.3 David Ferrer.

Ferrer earlier on Sunday beat another wildcard, Tennys Sandgren, in straight sets.

De Minaur initially struggled to hang with del Potro from the baseline as the No.6 seed blasted powerful serves and forehands.

Yet he wasn’t completely overwhelmed; he held a break point in the third game – which del Potro saved with an unreturnable serve – and later broke to get on the board at 1-4.

Always fighting.

Exquisite tennis from @alexdeminaur!#BNPPO18 pic.twitter.com/MzkXyARP4P

— Tennis TV (@TennisTV) March 12, 2018

When he held for 2-4, it appeared the 19-year-old was sinking his teeth into the match.

But del Potro at that point wrested control of the contest, holding to love and then winning his seventh point in a row to arrive at 0-40 and three set points.

With the first set in the bag, the Argentine continued to hit out, while De Minaur would go on to rue the fourth game during which he held two game points before dropping serve to fall behind 3-1.

Del Potro, an Indian Wells finalist in 2013, would not lose another game, despite the Aussie’s fighting efforts.

It was nonetheless an encouraging week for De Minaur in the Californian desert; he won his first main-draw match at an ATP Masters event with his come-from-behind victory over Jan-Lennard Struff in round one.

Daria Gavrilova, last remaining Australian in singles action, takes on seventh seed Caroline Garcia in the first match of Monday’s schedule.