Jack Draper has taken inspiration from Emma Raducanu’s US Open triumph three years ago as he looks to continue his own spectacular breakthrough run in New York before his tough semi-final against Jannik Sinner, the world No 1, on Friday.
“What Emma did was obviously incredibly inspiring,” said Draper, who is a year older than Raducanu. “I’ve known her from a young age and to see what she did was incredible. I was very proud of her, very excited, watching it thinking, obviously we’ve watched the likes of Andy Murray winning a grand slam from Great Britain, but her winning, it was just really a fairytale run. I definitely think as a competitor, it fuelled my fire. I really wanted to achieve what she’d done, winning a grand slam.”
Having started the tournament with one grand slam fourth-round appearance, Draper now stands just two wins away from the US Open title after marching into the semi-finals with a level of efficiency similar to Raducanu’s 2021 run. He still has not dropped a set.
This has been an extraordinarily open men’s draw and, after years of bad luck, Draper has clearly been a beneficiary with his pathway to the semi-finals. But he has taken his opportunities with both hands, playing such bold, attacking tennis and managing his nerves brilliantly in all of the decisive moments. In order to continue, Draper must now tackle one of the greatest challenges in this new generation of men’s tennis.
Having established himself as the world No 1 this year, Sinner continues to perform at a supreme level with remarkable consistency and he is now 53-5 (91%) this year overall plus 33-2 (94%) on hard courts. Not only do Sinner’s immense groundstrokes allow him to outhit most opponents, he has improved defensively too and it has become difficult to consistently put the ball past him. Draper will almost certainly need to produce his best serving performance of the tournament, maintain aggression behind his forehand on the biggest points and be clinical in attack in order to win.
In the early hours of Thursday morning, after the Italian’s tough win over Daniil Medvedev, the first mention of Draper drew a massive smile on Sinner’s face. In recent years they have become good friends after they began to send each other supportive texts. At the Canadian Open last month, they played doubles together and Draper was strongly supportive of Sinner after the Italian announced two weeks ago that he twice tested positive for the banned substance clostebol in March before an independent tribunal had found that he had no significant fault or negligence.
“We’re obviously young,” said Draper. “We’re playing this incredibly tough sport. There’s a lot of emotional ups and downs. There’s a lot of tough moments. So I think it started through sending messages to each other when we’re having bad moments or good moments.”
This match-up also underlines how individual and distinct each journey is. While Draper won their only professional match at Queen’s in 2021, their first on-court meeting came back in 2017 in a junior doubles match held in Berlin when they were 15 years old. Sinner, who combined tennis with a promising skiing career in his youth, was not a top junior and he reached just No 133 in the rankings compared to Draper’s top junior ranking of No 7. During that junior event, Sinner did not even make it out of the singles qualifying draw: “I remember playing him in doubles and we were saying, ‘Oh, hit to him!’ because he’s not the best player on the court,” Draper said, smiling.
However, as Draper fought with his body and was frequently sidelined by injuries in his first years as a professional, he watched as Sinner and other players from their generation overtook him and went on to enjoy the type of career that, at some points, seemed far from his grasp.
While discussing Raducanu’s triumph and the unrealistic expectations that followed her US Open title win at a time when she was not physically ready for the tour, Draper noted that he now views his injury layoffs as a blessing in disguise. They have taught him exactly what he needed to do to be successful in the sport.
“It’s made me realise that this is something where I have to put all my life into this sport,” he said. “I have to eat the right things, train even harder than I ever have done before. Get good people around me and kind of shut myself off and really focus on what’s going to make me one of the best players in the world. And I think learning those lessons, learning from other players and their different experiences, and seeing what’s gone on with me, I think it’s definitely important that I really looked at myself and tried to figure out how I’m going to be consistent.”
Finally, Draper is exactly where he should be, tussling with the best players in the world in the latter stages of one of the biggest tournaments. He already has all the weapons, the speed of movement and a sufficiently well-rounded game to not just duel with Sinner as an equal, but also to ensure that, regardless of what happens, this is only just the beginning of his success at the very highest level of his sport.
