Jack Draper braced for hot reception in French Open clash with Joao Fonseca
British number one Draper was taking on Czech youngster Jakub Mensik at the Miami Open when the match was interrupted after hundreds of fans started booing.
The noise was coming from a huge Brazilian contingent who had waited all day to watch teenage sensation Fonseca, only to realise his match had suddenly been moved to a different court.
'It was tough,' recalled Draper. 'There was a couple of games in the match where they were booing very loudly and we didn't know what was going on.
'The Miami Open got that one wrong. They'd been waiting all day, he was fourth on.
'I thought the crowd were there to watch me and when I rocked up to the court it was all 'Joao Fonseca', and I thought maybe they're not for me. It's incredible what he brings to the sport.'
If the queues snaking around Roland Garros towards Court 14 when Fonseca was beating Pierre-Hugues Herbert are anything to go by, then Draper, who silenced a raucous Paris crowd on Thursday night when he beat local hero Gael Monfils, is in for another hot reception.
Electric atmosphere, incredible players ⚡️
In what may be THE match of the tournament thus far, Draper manages to overcome Monfils in an absolute thriller, taking the win 6-3 4-6 6-3 7-5… 🔥#rolandgarros #jackdraper pic.twitter.com/3Rc3MqZggv
— ATP Tour (@atptour) May 29, 2025
Draper, who beat the 18-year-old at Indian Wells in their only previous meeting earlier this year, added: 'I enjoy it, I love it, I feed off it. It bodes well with my competitive nature. I'm looking forward to playing him, he's obviously a special player.
'I think I'm going to be playing him a lot. I think we'll be seeing him at the back end of draws and right at the top of the game.
'Everyone can see his potential and the way he plays, some of the stuff he comes out with is very powerful, very dynamic, very explosive and I think that's why it draws a lot of people to watch him. The huge fan base he brings from Brazil is great for the sport.
'I'll expect him to know my game now, he's played some really good stuff and kept rising up the rankings so it will be a tough challenge, especially in a grand slam on the clay.
'I'll know what to expect and not have any surprises but it will be a tough challenge for sure.'
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Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
Jack Draper's four key strengths recall ‘King of Clay' Rafael Nadal
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 💥 #RolandGarros — Roland-Garros (@rolandgarros) May 29, 2025 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. 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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.' 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. 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