Jack Draper might have been “fried,” or even French-fried, after his epic victory over Gael Monfils in the second round at Roland Garros, but the result was further evidence of the young Briton’s phenomenal improvement over the last year. Having never won a match at the French Open before this year, Draper has now not only won two matches in a row but overcome arguably one of the greatest tests that any non-French player can face–namely, beating a French player on Court Philippe Chatrier in a night session. And in doing so, he has shown that he now has the mental strength to go alongside the greatly increased physical strength that he has been demonstrating all year.
Defeat of Monfils Is Proof of How Draper Has Improved
Draper is undoubtedly the most improved male tennis player in the world over the last 12 months. Jannik Sinner’s own renaissance (or Tennaissance), which has taken him to World No.1 and three Major titles, began earlier, at the end of 2023, when he virtually single-handedly led Italy to its first Davis Cup victory in nearly 50 years and then immediately backed it up by winning the 2024 Australian Open. But over the last calendar year, or since the summer of 2024, it is Draper who has made the greatest strides of any current ATP player.
That began, of course, with his run to the semifinal of the US Open last September, where he was defeated by Sinner, the eventual winner of the tournament. However, in a sense that was something of a false dawn, because Draper enjoyed an extremely fortuitous run to the last four in New York. For example, in the fourth round Tomáš Macháč produced one of the all-time stinkers of a Grand Slam performance, which enabled Draper to achieve a comfortable straight-sets win. Then, in the quarterfinal, the usually obdurate Alex de Minaur was clearly hampered by physical problems, which meant he could not put up much of a fight and resulted in another straightforward straight-sets win for Draper. When Sinner duly dispatched Draper relatively easily in straight sets in the semifinal, it showed just how far the Briton still had to go to really compete for a Major Singles title.
Ever since then, however, Draper has closed the gap to Sinner and Alcaraz, to the extent that it increasingly appears that he can become “The Third Man” at the top of the men’s game. Indeed, he is already ranked No.4 in the live ATP Rankings. And given that at 23 he is five years younger than Alexander Zverev, the current No.3, and therefore much closer in age to Sinner and Alcaraz, he currently looks the best long-term bet to be their greatest challenger.
Draper’s Improved Physicality
The obvious improvement in Draper is in his physicality. For much of the first part of his career, he was beset by multiple injuries, such that he could never consistently show how good he was and was essentially limited to just brilliant cameo performances at Majors or Masters events. However, even over the brief off-season at the end of 2024, he virtually reinvented himself as an infinitely fitter and more durable player who could finally sustain the type of five-set performance that is necessary to win a Major.
That was first evident in Melbourne at the start of the year, when he produced a hat-trick of comeback wins in the opening week that would simply have been impossible for him to achieve earlier in his career. And he built on that vastly improved performance at a Major to win the sport’s so-called “Fifth Major” at Indian Wells, which included a comprehensive victory over Carlos Alcaraz in the semifinal.
Finally, and perhaps most impressively, Draper was able to translate his new and improved hardcourt form into new and improved clay-court form, to prove that he can begin to match Sinner and Alcaraz as all-surface players. He reached the final in Madrid and the quarterfinal in Rome, and has obviously continued that fine form on the red dirt in Paris.
And Improved Mentality To Go With It
Nevertheless, for all his other achievements this year, Draper’s victory over Monfils in four incredibly hard-fought sets might just have been his greatest test so far, and he passed it with aplomb. Monfils may never have won a Masters title, let alone a Major, but one title that he had undeniably claimed is “The King of the Night Session at Roland Garros.” He has won a number of them in recent years, with the most recent being his comeback from two sets down against Bolivia’s Hugo Dellien in the first round earlier this week.
Furthermore, given that Monfils will be 39 in just a few weeks’ time, it is possible that this will be his last ever appearance at Roland Garros. Consequently, the stage was set on Chatrier for the type of all-Marseilleise-singing performance that Arthur Fils had already produced on Court Suzanne Lenglen earlier in the day in his five-set defeat of Spain’s Jaime Munar.
It was the fact that Draper withstood all that emotion, indeed fervor, among the home fans that proved he now has the steely mentality to go with the steely physicality that he has developed over the last year. Indeed, Daniela Hantuchová, who was commentating on the match for the BBC, said that she had been even more impressed by the improvements in Draper’s mentality than the improvements in his physicality. She was referring to his greatly increased aggression as a player, which is in stark contrast to his earlier passivity, but it is also true of the incredible composure that he showed against Monfils, especially in an incredibly up-and-down fourth set that saw multiple breaks of serve.
Every winner Monfils hit was met by roars, whereas every winner Draper hit was met with almost complete silence, which must have been unsettling to say the least. A similar set of crowd reactions ultimately did for Munar against Fils, but Draper played through it brilliantly, eventually reeling off the last three games in a row to win 6-3 4-6 6-3 7-5.
Another “Away Match” Awaits Draper In The Third Round
The irony is that another “away match” awaits Draper in the third round, where he will face Brazil’s brilliant teenager Joao Fonseca. Such is the desire among Brazilian tennis fans for a successor to the great Guga Kuerten at Roland Garros that they will almost certainly constitute the bulk of the crowd for the match against Draper, on whichever court it is staged.
However, Draper can draw enormous strength ahead of that match from two recent events. First, he virtually thrashed Fonseca 6-4 6-0 when they met in the third round at Indian Wells in March. Secondly, and even more recently–indeed, in the last 24 hours–he has beaten one of the great modern heroes of French tennis on the centre court at Roland Garros. Both of those victories will give him enormous confidence as he battles to reach the second week of the French Open for the first time.
Mian Photo Credit: Susan Mullane-Imagn Images
