Jack Draper’s four key strengths that recall ‘King of Clay’ Rafa Nadal
Jack Draper’s physical stature and wingspan is proving an asset on clay - Getty Images/Andy Cheung
It all feels rather neat. As one left-hander with a nuclear forehand leaves the stage – via Rafael Nadal’s touching farewell ceremony at Roland Garros last week – another is emerging from the pack.
That second man is 23-year-old Jack Draper, the Surrey lad who has turned himself from an also-ran at this time last year to a proper contender, with his ranking closing in on No 4 in the world.
It would be going too far to suggest that Draper is Nadal’s heir apparent. He had barely seen a clay court until he reached voting age, and is still developing his relationship with this quirkiest of surfaces.
But when you sat behind the court during Saturday’s third-round match, in which Draper destroyed Brazilian wunderkind Joao Fonseca with his dive-bombing forehand, you found yourself in flashback territory. Telegraph Sport analyses the striking similarities.
The Semtex forehand
It’s all about the trajectory. When the ball comes looping off Draper’s racket, it looks as if it’s flying into the next postcode. But then the top-spin grips, and the ball starts hurtling back towards the ground like Wile E Coyote after his legs have stopped spinning.
On so many occasions in the Fonseca match, Draper’s forehand dipped and landed in the final six inches of the court, before exploding upwards again at a sharp angle.
As an opponent, you have two choices, and neither of them are good ones.
1. You can retreat way behind the baseline, and wait for the ball to come down at the end of its first bounce. Now you’ve become a passenger in the rally. You’re giving Draper an age to wind up his shots and make decisions, while opening up the angles for him to push you left and right at will.
2. You can step in and take the ball early, but this requires perfect timing as it jumps off the court like a startled cat. Should Draper come through Monday’s meeting with Alexander Bublik, he would probably earn a quarter-final with world No 1 Jannik Sinner. And the big question is whether Sinner – owner of the tour’s smoothest groundstrokes – can pull off this feat regularly.
So what does Draper himself think of the forehand comparison? “It’s tough for me to appreciate it because I’m the one hitting the ball,” he replied. “But I see it when I’m on YouTube watching the highlights. I can appreciate it is getting better and better but I watch Rafa sometimes and I’m thinking, his forehand’s a joke. So I want to get to that level but I definitely understand the comparison of how it’s kicking up and the spin and the speed of it.”
Draper’s deft dropper
If people don’t remember Nadal as a drop-shot artiste, that’s because they were distracted by his world-beating forehand. In fact, he was a master at shoving people back with that same high, heavy trajectory that Draper employs, and then popping the ball into the empty forecourt with minimal fuss.
Draper has been developing the same tactic during this tournament. He used six drop shots in round one against Mattia Bellucci, 12 in round two against Gaël Monfils, and no fewer than 15 against Fonseca.
Is Draper simply learning on the job, like some tennis intern? Perhaps, but he may also be tailoring his approach to the opponent. Where Bellucci remained fleet-flooted throughout, Monfils started cramping early in Thursday’s match, and the 18-year-old Fonseca showed his physical immaturity.
“Do me a favour,” yelled a frustrated John McEnroe on commentary after a tiring Fonseca had declined to chase another short ball. “Could you at least try for those?”
Draper has developed finesse as well as a booming forehand - Getty Images/Alain Jocard
Built like a rugby player
“Rafa is a physical freak,” said Mark Petchey, now Emma Raducanu’s coach, when Telegraph Sport interviewed him for a long read on the Nadal forehand in 2021.
Here was another under-rated virtue of the King of Clay. He made generating massive forces look so comfortable that few realised how hard he worked on every shot. But his injury-wracked career was testament to the strain he placed on his body, especially by comparison with Roger Federer’s more classical, lower-impact style.
Draper is a bigger man. At 6ft 4in and pushing 14 stone, he is probably the burliest figure in the world’s top 20, with the build of a rugby flank-forward. Seeing him loom over Fonseca at Saturday’s coin-toss, the phrase “man and boy” came immediately to mind.
Size has its drawbacks. Draper has already collected more serious injuries than most players his age. And if he is taken to five sets by Sinner on a hot day, one suspects that he might tire first, despite his unsparing approach to fitness training.
Yet Draper’s physicality is also a weapon. Not only does he intimidate opponents, but he has also outworked them over the first three rounds of this French Open. Even Bellucci, who stayed the course better than Fonseca and Monfils, looked weary by the end. At just 5ft 9in, he had to keep jumping up to meet that high-bouncing forehand somewhere near his strike zone, and all the effort drained the energy from his legs.
When asked this week about the inspiration he takes from Nadal, Draper replied: “It’s partly about his game but more so his competitive nature, his doggedness, his ability to never go away. Andy [Murray] is the same but I loved Rafa to be honest, the grunt, everything. He was someone who massively inspired me to become the player I am and hopefully I can get to his level.”
Draper towered over his French Open third-round opponent Joao Fonseca - Getty Images/Julian Finney
Relentless focus
There’s another reason why Nadal was able to accumulate such extraordinary statistics at Roland Garros (14 titles), Monte Carlo (11), Barcelona (12) and Rome (10). He was playing on the surface that rewards incremental superiority, stroke by punishing stroke.
On hard courts, you can recover from the corners more easily in defence, and you can try to counterpunch your way out of trouble. Clay is all about building a positional advantage, which often means creeping forwards during a rally until the whole court is at your mercy.
People think that Nadal hit spectacular shots, but he actually hated taking risks, and only did so when he had no alternative. It is a model that both Draper and Cameron Norrie – the other British left-hander who has reached the fourth round here in Paris – are learning from.
“I was able to play consistent kind of vintage Norrie tennis,” said Norrie on Saturday night, after defeating Draper’s fellow Briton and great junior rival Jacob Fearnley. “Just playing seven out of 10 for 3½ hours.”
We have already addressed Draper’s physicality, but his mentality is equally as important. Asked this week about facing a succession of mercurial opponents, he replied: “Being a consistent player is something I’ve wanted to achieve for a while now and I think I’m doing it better and better. I don’t need to play my best level to win matches because I know my base level is high.
“If I’m able to play point by point I know it’s tough for guys to beat me. Especially someone if they’re up and down, like Monfils or Bublik, they’re gonna play some great tennis and, yes, they could beat me for sure. But I know it’s going to be very tough because I’m always going to be at that level.”
According to Jez Green – who used to be Andy Murray’s fitness trainer – the ideal clay-court mindset has an element of masochism, because anyone who comes out on this slow surface and tries to fire winners in all directions is unlikely to prevail.
“Rafa’s mindset is perfect because he enjoys the whole experience of suffering,” said Green. “He loves that clay-court feeling of building points slowly, churning out victories through sheer effort, taking the long way around.”
So if Draper is going to continue his heroics next week, he will need to keep embracing the grind.
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