Jack Draper gave himself a crucial pep talk during a toilet break to inspire himself against Carlos Alcaraz at Indian Wells. The young Brit reached the biggest final of his career by downing Alcaraz in the last four, surviving a scare to record a 6-1 0-6 6-4 victory. He made a flying start to proceedings, claiming the opening set in just 23 minutes to lay down a significant early marker.
It did not take long for Alcaraz to fire back in style, bagelling Draper in the second set. Controversy reigned supreme in the final set, with two video reviews needed to confirm that Draper had won a point after he was initially denied by an erroneous double bounce call.
He went on to wrap up the match, holding his nerve to beat Alcaraz and set up a meeting with Holger Rune in Sunday’s final. Speaking in his post-match press conference, Draper revealed that he motivated himself with a pep talk in the toilet before taking to the court for the decisive third set.
Reflecting on the encounter, he said: “Obviously the first set, I came out, I think his energy was a bit low, couple of errors here and there. Obviously that carried on to the first game of the second as well and I didn’t get that game.
“I did feel like, you know, all of a sudden the occasion, I feel like obviously had a lot of different experiences. This is a new one for me. Obviously big match for myself. I knew that if I won I would be top 10 and playing a semi-final against Carlos, sometimes that makes you feel certain things.
“I definitely felt like my energy really dropped. I kind of felt a bit lethargic and my legs stopped working, and obviously that’s not ideal when you want to really go for it and stuff. Like I said, all new experiences for me.
“Then, yeah, obviously after that set went away, I went to the toilet and just, yeah, kind of looked at myself in the mirror and was like: ‘You need to really, you need to really get my stuff together’.
“There’s no time to be tired, there’s no time to be sort of thinking about being down here. There is lots of tennis still to be played. He’s obviously feeling stuff himself. You know, I just had to really knuckle down and make sure I brought lots of energy to the third.”
Draper also hailed the presence of the video review technology at Indian Wells, with other tournaments not offering the same luxury to determine the winner of contentious points.
‘Obviously we do have the review here and that’s a really good thing,” he added. “It was a tough situation because obviously felt like I got the ball up, and then also, I know that Carlos had only just got to it and he missed it wide.
“So I asked [the umpire] Mohamed [Lahyani] to look at the video review and was it clear that I got it up? But then it was the fact that I don’t think Carlos really had a good play on the ball and he missed it.
“So I asked him to review that, to see what he thought of that, and then the only other thing after that was, I asked Carlos at the net whether he felt like Mohamed, when he interrupted, whenever that was during the point, affected Carlos’ shot, because he missed it.
“He might have missed it because someone might have said Mohamed might have called it and that put him off. But he said it didn’t, so I think the call was right. Yeah, like, I think it’s really good for tennis that we’ve got the video reviews.”
Content Source: www.express.co.uk