Carlos Alcaraz’s 13-match winning streak on grass is over, ended by the home favourite Jack Draper in the second round of the Cinch Championships on Thursday afternoon.
Draper, now on a seven-match winning run of his own, had too much for Alcaraz, whose unbeaten run on the surface dated back to the Queen’s-Wimbledon double he pulled off last year. He triumphed 7-6(3), 6-3, in a match where the closeness in the first set largely came from tight games on Alcaraz’s serve, moreso than on Draper’s.
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This was only Alcaraz’s third tour-level defeat on a grass court, having previously held a 17-2 record.
Next up at Queen’s for Draper is a quarterfinal against the American No. 5 seed Tommy Paul on Friday, while Alcaraz will regroup to defend his Wimbledon title from next Monday.
How Draper blunted Alcaraz’s defensive potency to win
One of Carlos Alcaraz’s greatest strengths is his ability to turn seemingly lost positions into winning ones, through a combination of his speed, resilience, and staggering shotmaking.
In this match, not winning enough of those positions was the difference. According to the “steal score,” a metric created by Tennis Data Innovations which measures how often a player wins points when in defence, Alcaraz won just 20 per cent of his defensive points, way, way down on his average for the year of 40.9 per cent (which puts him top of all players on the ATP Tour.)
This is partly attributable to Draper’s ability to attack cross-court with his forehand into Alcaraz’s backhand wing; it’s also partly attributable to the surface. But on this very grass last year, according to Tennis Viz’s analysis, Alcaraz won the title with a steal score of 38 per cent, dropping by almost half on Thursday against Draper.
Draper didn’t win that many more defensive points himself (just 22 per cent), but crucially, he did a lot more of the attacking (31 per cent of the points compared to 26 per cent for Alcaraz), and that proved decisive. Draper was also able to step up his level in the crucial first set tie-break, increasing that margin in attack to 37 per cent against 20 per cent for Alcaraz. Grass rewards the player who can get on the front foot, and that was evidenced again in this match, in which even Alcaraz, one of the best defenders in the world, was unable to cope with Draper’s relentless aggression.
What does this mean for Draper?
This could be a breakthrough moment for the 22-year-old Briton, who became the national No. 1 this week.
Until last week his career, largely on a trajectory of steady progress, had lacked three things: a title; a major upset; and a consistent feeling that he is growing into his identity as a tennis player.
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All of a sudden, he has all three, winning the Stuttgart Open on Sunday and defeating the reigning Wimbledon and French Open champion Alcaraz four days later. In front of home fans, this win will send British interest skyrocketing ahead of Wimbledon, with Draper ranked at a career-high of No. 31 and in line to be seeded at the Championships, where no one will want to face him.
Draper’s game is now built around a massively improved serve and a devilish mixture of spin and power, as well as careful use of the angles available to him as a left-handed player. During this year’s clay-court swing, his 6ft 4in (193cm) frame looked cumbersome and uncertain, with Draper playing passive tennis, blessed with the ability to be aggressive but lacking confidence.
On grass, and after improving that serve, he looks all of that height and presence. Against Alcaraz he faced just a single break point, saving it with an outrageous half-volley pick-up and remaining aggressive throughout, in the same way that the Spaniard has run through so many players on the tour since his breakthrough.
Having recently brought the former Wimbledon quarterfinalist and Queen’s champion Wayne Ferreira onto his coaching team, Draper looks ready to properly impose himself on the world’s best players. Ferreira said on the Tennis Podcast this week that he is sure Draper is a future top-10 player, ready to make good on the promise he showed in reaching the junior Wimbledon final six years ago.
And what about Alcaraz?
How much of a concern this defeat is for Alcaraz remains to be seen. It was a disappointing loss but the world No. 2 has played a huge amount of tennis recently, winning the French Open and then coming to Queen’s after only a few days off. The worry is that Alcaraz still has matches like these from time to time, where he struggles to fully adjust to opponents finding ways to impose themselves on his style.
Even in winning at Roland Garros, his scratchy second-round win over the Dutch qualifier Jesper de Jong was pretty unconvincing. It is worth remembering though that he only recently turned 21, and maintaining the intensity he had to show at Roland Garros week in, week out is not easy.
GO DEEPER
Surface mastery: How Alcaraz won Grand Slams on hard, grass and clay courts
(Clive Brunskill / Getty Images)
