Almost everything was going right for American Jared Donaldson during his second-round match at the US Open. He had won the first set and had just gone up two breaks against Serbian Viktor Troicki. Then the 30-year-old Troicki needed a medical timeout.
A few games later, Donaldson had grabbed a two-set lead and was one set away from his first third-round match at a Grand Slam tournament. Then Troicki needed to use the bathroom.
A less mature player might have lost his focus during the breaks or used them as excuses for later poor play. But not Donaldson, who went on to win the match 7-5, 6-3, 6-3, for his fifth consecutive win at the US Open after qualifying.
“I had to keep focused, because obviously definitely an amateur thing would have been to kind of lose focus at that moment,” Donaldson said. “I know being up two breaks that he wasn't going to quit. Definitely not in the second being down two breaks and up two sets to love, so I tried to stay focused and play my game.”
For the 19-year-old Donaldson, the biggest match of his life was just another opportunity to show his advanced maturity.
When he was 14, his parents and coaches feared he was becoming too one-dimensional with his flat, hard ground strokes that had been honed on the indoor courts of Providence, Rhode Island. So they sent Donaldson to Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he trained on the red clay for about two years. In the capital city, Donaldson trained with 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds trying to become professional tennis players, a much different environment than a weekend junior tennis tournament with 14-year-olds.
“The biggest takeaway from me in Argentina was how focused and dedicated those guys were training. They were so serious. I think it was really eye-opening for me. The fact that they work so hard even when they were tired,” Donaldson said.
Every day, he would work on his fitness for two and half hours and hit balls for another four hours. “I had a pro schedule when I was 14 years old,” he said. “It taught me how to work really hard.”
Former Top 25 American Taylor Dent, now Donaldson's coach, told USOpen.org that Donaldson also matured quickly because of his early exposure to professional tennis players. He played in the 2013 US Open Qualifying Tournament as a 16-year-old and played mostly ATP Challenger tournaments the following season.
“Exposure to people trying to make a living off of tennis matures you,” Dent said. “Kids behave a certain way and act a certain way, and pros, especially desperate pros trying to fight for money, act differently.”
Dent, Donaldson’s coach for the past two and a half years, says Donaldson also inherited some of his maturity from his father, Courtney Donaldson, who took over his father’s construction business and studied electrical engineering. “His father is very analytical. He thinks through things very thoroughly,” Dent said.
Jared Donaldson’s maturity has been tested recently, months before he made his career-best run at the US Open. Donaldson’s American peers, including 18-year-olds Taylor Fritz and Frances Tiafoe, have both climbed more than 100 ranking spots in the past 12 months. Fritz, for instance, has jumped 685 spots to No. 53; Tiafoe has moved 132 spots to No. 125. Donaldson? A year ago, he was ranked No. 146. He entered the US Open as No. 122.
“The temptation there was to hit the panic button and say, ‘Oh we’re not doing something right,’” Dent said.
But the subtle rise was great news to Dent and Donaldson’s father. Dent had been making changes to Jared Donaldson’s game to try to help him play more like Novak Djokovic, whose all-court, no-weakness game serves as their template for Jared’s future. For example, he had been trying to get Jared to play closer to the baseline and farther away from the back fence. “It may seem like something very small but until you actually try to make that change, it is an enormous change. It is massive and it was very frustrating for Jared,” Dent said.
Typically, when coaches change aspects of players’ games, their level might temporarily slip – along with their ranking. But, with Donaldson, they’d changed his game and his ranking hadn’t slipped?
“From our perspective, that was just like, ‘Man this is really good,’” Dent said.
Donaldson is still 19, though, Dent reminds. He, like every 19-year-old tennis player, wishes he would have won a US Open when he was 16. And he, like everyone, including 40-year-old adults, wants results now.
“We want that instant gratification,” Dent said. “But in tennis, it doesn’t work like that, you put in the hard work, and you will see it, but we don’t know when you’ll see it. You might see it a week from now. You might see it a year from now.”
That’s why Dent has tried to get Donaldson to believe in what they work on every day in Irvine, California, where they train, and to narrow his focus during matches.
“The big thing that he tells me before every match is just go out there and control the things you can control,” Jared Donaldson said. “There's so many things out of your control that it's almost a waste of time to even think about it. You have to focus on fighting, competing, how points are going during the match. Because tennis is very fluid. One moment you could play great; the next moment you could be playing not so well or your opponent could have changed something.”
That advice will be especially important on Saturday afternoon. Donaldson faces No. 21 Ivo Karlovic in the new Grandstand to try to extend his best run at a Grand Slam tournament and reach the fourth round of the US Open. During Karlovic’s first-round contest, the 6’11” Croatian, who also has never reached the fourth round in New York, set a new aces match record at the Open. Karlovic blasted 61 aces during his five-set win against Yen-Hsun Lu of Chinese Taipei. The previous record was 49 by Richard Krajicek in 1999.
Win or lose, though, Dent isn’t placing too much on the match. He knows that in the weeks and months ahead, there will be more changes to Donaldson’s game and more opportunities for the 19-year-old to showcase his matured mindset.
“There are more changes in Jared’s future that are going to be frustrating and devastating,” Dent said, “but they have to happen if he wants to have a chance to win Slams.”
