After Jack Draper had surged through to the US Open quarter-finals with another crushing win, one might have expected him to swagger his way into the interview room with a broad grin.
Yet Draper’s primary emotion was bemusement. “I’m finding it strange,” he said. “In some of the matches I kind of lose concentration because I feel like it is going quickly, and it is going my way.”
After four matches in which he has dropped serve only once, and never been taken to so much as a tie-break, Draper is struggling to work out why his opponents keep self-destructing.
We could put this down to sheer luck. After all, he has yet to play a seed, and was spared the challenge of facing Wimbledon champion Carlos Alcaraz in the third round after unheralded Dutchman Botic van de Zandschulp sprang the biggest grand-slam surprise in years.
But there is something else going on here. You could see it clearly in Monday’s 102-minute win over Tomas Machac; Draper is sowing confusion with his unconventional game-style. His four opponents have looked as baffled as newspaper readers who thought they had picked up the quick crossword, only to discover they were doing the cryptic one instead.
Part of this may relate to the upgrades Draper introduced during the summer, including a new willingness to come forward and finish points at the net. His left-handedness is a great asset here. Three-quarters of break points come when the server is on the advantage side – the left, as you look towards the returner – and that is the side where a lefty can bend a swerving sliced serve way out of court.
Time and again, Draper has curled his slider – which some pros call the “can-opener” – towards the courtside hoardings and then rumbled into the net. Everyone knows it is coming, but dealing with it is another question.
The returner is left with only a small gap up the line to find with their backhand. Machac managed to locate this hole twice during Monday’s match, but never on one of his six break points. So it is that Draper leads the field with his tournament tally of 20 out of 21 break points saved.
Unconventional groundstrokes
And then there are the groundstrokes. As a right-handed player coming up against a lefty, you normally want to fire your crosscourt forehand – the bread-and-butter shot for any pro – into their backhand wing. The idea is to strike first, before they have a chance to do the same thing to you.
The odd thing about Draper, though, is that he writes and brushes his teeth with his right hand – the one that supplies the power and accuracy in his impermeable backhand. Machac kept approaching to the backhand wing, and then being confounded when the ball came back with interest.
So do you play to the forehand instead? Well, Draper misses that shot more often. But he also slams a decent proportion of forehands away for unanswerable winners. And when he plays a rally shot, he hits it with a curious combination of top and side-spin that makes it difficult to line up.
When you sit at courtside, you can see the ball drift sideways at the last instant. An unwary opponent plants his feet too early and then finds himself out of position for his next groundstroke.
Draper has spoken this week about the helpful way these courts take spin. “They really suit my game, especially being a lefty,” he said after his second-round win over Facundo Diaz Acosta. “If someone hits a slice serve, it really moves off the court.”
Nasty forehand
The same could be said of that nasty forehand, in which the power comes not only from his arm but from a mighty upward surge in his legs. There is a touch of Rafael Nadal in the way Draper loads his forehand with curl and top-spin.
Excitement levels are building around Draper, who is the lowest-ranked man to reach the quarter-finals in New York. But today’s match against 10th-seed Alex de Minaur will be a significant step up.
A player who rarely gives you freebies, De Minaur will surely have had a lefty practice partner hitting sliders to him in the advantage court, and making sure he is ready to find that crucial backhand return up the line.
It will also be Draper’s first outing on Arthur Ashe Stadium – the biggest court in tennis, which seats almost 24,000 people. But his coach, James Trotman, says he has been preparing for this moment.
“He’s been having a little stroll out there when he comes in in the morning,” Trotman told the BBC. “It’s an incredible court and he’s going to love playing on it. Going on Armstrong [against Machac] helps, because it’s a bigger court.
“The noise and the court and the atmosphere will certainly happen on Ashe as well. There’s a great energy here at the US Open.”
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