When reflecting on his favourite moment of 2024 in December, Jack Draper didn’t pick reaching the U.S. Open semifinal, winning his first and second ATP Tour titles, or beating Carlos Alcaraz.
He picked the aftermath of his most disappointing defeat of the year, a loss to qualifier Jesper de Jong at the French Open in May.
“When I came home from Paris, I was all over the place thinking: ‘I need to get my s— together, what am I doing? I’m not fulfilling my potential. I’m not the player I want to be,’” he told a small group of reporters in a pub in west London just before Christmas.
“When I look back over this year, that’s something that actually brings me the most satisfaction. The most joy is working out certain situations and then turning into a different player.”
Draper, 23, was ranked No. 40 and having an identity crisis about his game. He had brought on former world No. 6 Wayne Ferreira to support his main coach James Trotman, and Ferreira wanted Draper to use his bulky 6ft 4in (193cm) frame more. But after a disappointing clay-court season, Draper decided instead to lean on his other talents: soft hands, athleticism, and a heavy forehand that he could blast through the court or kick up above an opponent’s shoulders.
“Wayne wanted me to try to be braver,” he said.
“I suppose I needed that, but at the same time, I needed to understand that that’s not the player I am as well. One of my main attributes as a player is my ability to move well for my size, and be able to get that one more ball back in court.
“That’s how I won matches when I was younger, when I was small.”
Draper and Ferreira split after the grass-court season, and while Draper took some of Ferreira’s advice to heart by not being so “one-paced,” he has embraced the natural variety he possesses and stormed up the tennis ranks ever since.
Last Sunday, Draper won the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells. It is his first ATP Masters 1,000 title — the rung just below the Grand Slams — and it moved him into the ATP top 10 for the first time. The slow, grippy hard courts in the Californian desert reward players who can mix up their shots; witness Alcaraz, who Draper stunned in the semifinals despite being on the ropes in the third set. The 21-year-old Spaniard is perhaps the most dexterous player in the world and a two-time Indian Wells champion.
During the Indian Wells final against Holger Rune, Draper demonstrated his mental strategy, centering his vision on his thumb at changes of ends. Because he is so open about discussing the mental side of the game — including on-court anxiety — and his misfortune with injuries, the texture of his tennis and its specifics sometimes get overlooked. In the California Desert, it was in full bloom.
Draper’s forehand is his most devastating ground stroke, but his backhand is his most reliable. Like another tennis southpaw, Rafael Nadal, Draper is a natural right-hander who plays left-handed, so he finds natural stability on the two-handed backhand.
“I think that really helps me, because my forehand has been improving all the time,” he said in a news conference after beating Alcaraz on Saturday. “My forehand is naturally the shot where I’m not as comfortable. It’s always been my backhand which I can hit with my eyes closed.”
Draper’s solidity on the backhand side is discomfiting for his opponents. Against most lefties, the go-to play for a right-hander is to try and get into a cross-court rally in which they hit their forehand to their opponent’s backhand, which is typically the weaker shot.
“I really have no problem against any player with their forehand into my backhand,” Draper continued. “Usually that’s something where players struggle, but with myself, that’s a big strength.”
According to data from TennisViz and Tennis Data Innovations (TDI), we can see that over the last year, opponents won 42.8 percent of points when hitting cross-court forehands against Draper, compared to the tour average of 45 percent. Last week at Indian Wells, this figure for Draper’s opponents was even lower, down at 41.7 percent — a significant drop below the average for one of the most important and regularly deployed shots in tennis.
By contrast, Draper’s forehand was even more devastating than usual, particularly against Rune in a one-sided final. When hitting it from the middle of the court, with the choice to go to his opponent’s forehand or backhand, Draper destroyed Rune’s forehand, winning 100 percent of points behind that play.
Draper has worked with Trotman on his movement to stabilize the forehand, acknowledging that he used to struggle when anyone went after it — as he did to Rune Sunday.
“Any pace into it was a problem,” he told a small group of reporters on a video call.
“I remember when I played Carlos Alcaraz here a couple of years ago, I felt like I couldn’t hit the skin off a rice pudding. So I just feel like I’ve come a long way with that.
“I think a lot of it has to do with my positioning, with my body. I’ve worked on that feeling of being balanced a lot on the forehand and not lifting off. I still lift off some forehands, but I feel like most of the time my commitment is to go through the ball and to feel like I’m hurting off that shot instead of it just being a kind of average, spinny ball.”
In that match against Alcaraz, he lost 6-2, 2-0 by retirement. Things looked very different in their semifinal.
Despite Draper’s evolution as a player, there is still no weapon in his game bigger than his serve. That too developed relatively late, since Draper was only 5 feet 6 inches until a handy growth spurt in his mid-teens.
Speaking after his devastating serving display against Rune, Draper said: “My rhythm and my placement has been really, really good. And it’s obviously a huge, huge part of my game. If I can get that right, that sets me up well for the rest of my tennis.”
At Indian Wells, Draper improved his second-serve points won from 52 percent over the last year to 54 percent. He also used his accuracy to account for the slower courts’ effect on his speed, winning 78 percent of points behind serves to the T on the deuce side, and 83 percent on the ad; 40 and 39 percent of those serves went unreturned, respectively.
The serving display gave him the platform to play with more of the variety he has been striving for, mixing up his pace and coming to the net at various points. Against Ben Shelton in last week’s quarterfinals, Draper somehow manoeuvred his body to hit a volley that was flying towards his chest, fell down, and got back up to win the point.
Against Rune, Draper showcased some outstanding defense to go alongside his devastating attack, winning 43 percent of points when defending, per the TDI “steal score” metric. Draper’s average in the past 52 weeks is 35 percent. It was his rich mix of attacking and defending options, rather than a brute force approach, that took him to the title.
Draper is one of many ATP players who are facing up to how Alcaraz and world No. 1 Jannik Sinner have reconfigured tennis, but he appears better placed to embrace that change than some of his peers in the rankings. 1990s-born players, including world No. 2 Alexander Zverev, No. 4 Taylor Fritz and No. 6 Casper Ruud have openly said that they feel ill-positioned to adjust to the huge hitting and court coverage. Draper has studied them both carefully and gotten to know them well, too; Sinner is a friend and former doubles partner, while Draper was planning on spending the most recent off-season with Alcaraz in Spain before a hip injury intervened.
Draper is ranked No. 3 by his 2025 results, and has won 13 of his 15 matches this year, including 10 of the last 11. He heads to Miami as one of the tournament favorites, and then has very few points to defend during the clay-court swing. But the biggest challenge is the Grand Slams — the biggest tournaments in the world which bring the elongated five-set format in which Draper has struggled more in the past. His recent form, however, is making him believe he is on his way.
“I can compete consistently against top players in the world. I feel like I belong completely,” he said.
(Top photo: Andy Abeyta / The Desert Sun via Imagn Images)
