Over the course of his first week at the 2023 US Open, 21-year-old Jack Draper has gone toe-to-toe with No. 17 seed Hubert Hurkacz—one of the best servers in the men's game—and vanquished John Isner-vanquisher Michael Mmoh. Into Round 4 at a Grand Slam for the first time, he'll next meet world No. 8 Andrey Rublev for a chance to become the first British man to make the quarterfinals in Flushing Meadows since Andy Murray last earned a spot in the final eight, all the way back in 2016.
"Obviously Rublev, he's been in the Top 10 for many years,” Draper said of his next opponent, following his Round 3 clash with Mmoh.
"He's consistently doing well in the Slams and won his first [Masters] 1000 [tournament] this year. Anyone who you play in the fourth round, I suppose they've won three matches and they're playing good tennis and feeling good."
Given his results, Draper, too, seems to be feeling good—which wasn’t necessarily a given upon his arrival in New York. Just one week before the 2023 US Open kicked off, he felt something in his arm mid-match at a tournament in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and made the decision to retire after the first set.
“I came [to Flushing Meadows] with the intention of, ‘Oh, we’ll take it day-by-day,’” Draper said. “I had a scan, and I had a very small bit of edema in my arm, which is basically a tear. I was looking with my coach and physio thinking, you know, just another bit of time off. We were almost in tears. What more can we do?”
It's been a season of a “bit of time off” for the young lefty. Just in January, he'd reached a career-high ranking of world No. 38 thanks to a breakout 2022 that included multiple tour-level semifinals, a quarterfinal showing at the Masters 1000 event in Montreal, and a Round 3 appearance at the US Open.
Since then, his own body has prevented just about any forward momentum.
In the spring, he struggled with an abdominal tear, which forced him to pull out of his fourth-round match against Carlos Alcaraz at Indian Wells and then subsequently withdraw from the next tournament in Miami. He played just one set at the French Open before retiring with a shoulder injury, and a few weeks later, announced that he’d be skipping the grass-court swing entirely to manage the issue.
(When a British player takes Wimbledon off his schedule, you know it's serious.)
In just half a year, his ranking plummeted to outside the world's Top 100, and he currently sits at No. 123.
"[It's] just a real reality check," he said. "Seeing people play week in, week out, doing great, and I just sat on the couch doing zero."
He wasn't actually doing zero, though. Like a true disciplined professional, Draper took the time off to go "back to the drawing board" and look at how he could get more out of himself. One issue he'd faced frequently in his short career: cramping during long physical matches.
He wound up fitting in two fitness sessions a day while he couldn't work on other parts of his game during the layoff. He also sat and took a moment to reflect on his accomplishments, which the "onto the next" mentality of tour life does not often give players the chance to do.
"[It's] just a real reality check... Seeing people play week in, week out, doing great, and I just sat on the couch, doing zero."
"I think maybe last year I took for granted how well I was doing," he said. "And this year at the start I felt like I had the weight of the world on my shoulders. I wasn't appreciating the position I was in and how well I had done. ... I was at the Australian Open, and I was playing against Rafa on the main court there [in the first round]. I was stressing out, thinking, 'This is tough. I've just come from Adelaide where I made the semifinals, I've only [had] one day to prepare.'
"But I was No. 38 in the world, and I was 20 years old, and I was doing amazingly well. I just didn't see that at all."
Equipped with that improved fitness level and more positive outlook, Draper felt he was coming to this year’s US Open “a much more complete and better player” than he was at the 2022 event, or even throughout the entire 2022 season, for that matter.
That's why it was so tough to get the news about the edema—yet another physical setback—just days before the tournament's start.
"There was maybe a 70/30 chance I couldn't play," he said. "But we got the scans done and sent it back home and they said 'It's not the same injury as what you had, so it's not that serious. There's a chance you can play if you look after it right.'"
Draper beat his own odds and decided to hit the court. Now, three rounds later, he's achieved his best-ever showing at a Grand Slam. Against Mmoh, he also scored his first four-set victory in an immensely physical battle on a hot Friday afternoon, a testament to the work he completed during his hiatus.
On Monday, when he walks out into Louis Armstrong Stadium to take on Rublev, he'll have the opportunity to accomplish even more.
"It's weird how this sport works," he said. "Sometimes you can be at your lowest point and then all of a sudden, you get a bit of form and you're playing great and your body feels good. Hopefully, touch wood, this is going to be the start of something."
