Culture
Jack Draper’s tennis: How embracing variety took him to Indian Wells title
When reflecting on his favourite moment of 2024 in December, Jack Draper didn’t pick reaching the U.S. Open semifinal, winning his first and second ATP Tour titles, or beating Carlos Alcaraz.
He picked the aftermath of his most disappointing defeat of the year, a loss to qualifier Jesper de Jong at the French Open in May.
“When I came home from Paris, I was all over the place thinking: ‘I need to get my s— together, what am I doing? I’m not fulfilling my potential. I’m not the player I want to be,’” he told a small group of reporters in a pub in west London just before Christmas.
“When I look back over this year, that’s something that actually brings me the most satisfaction. The most joy is working out certain situations and then turning into a different player.”
Draper, 23, was ranked No. 40 and having an identity crisis about his game. He had brought on former world No. 6 Wayne Ferreira to support his main coach James Trotman, and Ferreira wanted Draper to use his bulky 6ft 4in (193cm) frame more. But after a disappointing clay-court season, Draper decided instead to lean on his other talents: soft hands, athleticism, and a heavy forehand that he could blast through the court or kick up above an opponent’s shoulders.
“Wayne wanted me to try to be braver,” he said.
“I suppose I needed that, but at the same time, I needed to understand that that’s not the player I am as well. One of my main attributes as a player is my ability to move well for my size, and be able to get that one more ball back in court.
“That’s how I won matches when I was younger, when I was small.”
Draper and Ferreira split after the grass-court season, and while Draper took some of Ferreira’s advice to heart by not being so “one-paced,” he has embraced the natural variety he possesses and stormed up the tennis ranks ever since.
Last Sunday, Draper won the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells. It is his first ATP Masters 1,000 title — the rung just below the Grand Slams — and it moved him into the ATP top 10 for the first time. The slow, grippy hard courts in the Californian desert reward players who can mix up their shots; witness Alcaraz, who Draper stunned in the semifinals despite being on the ropes in the third set. The 21-year-old Spaniard is perhaps the most dexterous player in the world and a two-time Indian Wells champion.
During the Indian Wells final against Holger Rune, Draper demonstrated his mental strategy, centering his vision on his thumb at changes of ends. Because he is so open about discussing the mental side of the game — including on-court anxiety — and his misfortune with injuries, the texture of his tennis and its specifics sometimes get overlooked. In the California Desert, it was in full bloom.
Draper’s flashing forehand was just one component of his success at Indian Wells. (Clive Brunskill / Getty Images)
Draper’s forehand is his most devastating ground stroke, but his backhand is his most reliable. Like another tennis southpaw, Rafael Nadal, Draper is a natural right-hander who plays left-handed, so he finds natural stability on the two-handed backhand.
“I think that really helps me, because my forehand has been improving all the time,” he said in a news conference after beating Alcaraz on Saturday. “My forehand is naturally the shot where I’m not as comfortable. It’s always been my backhand which I can hit with my eyes closed.”
Draper’s solidity on the backhand side is discomfiting for his opponents. Against most lefties, the go-to play for a right-hander is to try and get into a cross-court rally in which they hit their forehand to their opponent’s backhand, which is typically the weaker shot.
“I really have no problem against any player with their forehand into my backhand,” Draper continued. “Usually that’s something where players struggle, but with myself, that’s a big strength.”
According to data from TennisViz and Tennis Data Innovations (TDI), we can see that over the last year, opponents won 42.8 percent of points when hitting cross-court forehands against Draper, compared to the tour average of 45 percent. Last week at Indian Wells, this figure for Draper’s opponents was even lower, down at 41.7 percent — a significant drop below the average for one of the most important and regularly deployed shots in tennis.
By contrast, Draper’s forehand was even more devastating than usual, particularly against Rune in a one-sided final. When hitting it from the middle of the court, with the choice to go to his opponent’s forehand or backhand, Draper destroyed Rune’s forehand, winning 100 percent of points behind that play.
Draper has worked with Trotman on his movement to stabilize the forehand, acknowledging that he used to struggle when anyone went after it — as he did to Rune Sunday.
“Any pace into it was a problem,” he told a small group of reporters on a video call.
“I remember when I played Carlos Alcaraz here a couple of years ago, I felt like I couldn’t hit the skin off a rice pudding. So I just feel like I’ve come a long way with that.
“I think a lot of it has to do with my positioning, with my body. I’ve worked on that feeling of being balanced a lot on the forehand and not lifting off. I still lift off some forehands, but I feel like most of the time my commitment is to go through the ball and to feel like I’m hurting off that shot instead of it just being a kind of average, spinny ball.”
In that match against Alcaraz, he lost 6-2, 2-0 by retirement. Things looked very different in their semifinal.
Despite Draper’s evolution as a player, there is still no weapon in his game bigger than his serve. That too developed relatively late, since Draper was only 5 feet 6 inches until a handy growth spurt in his mid-teens.
Speaking after his devastating serving display against Rune, Draper said: “My rhythm and my placement has been really, really good. And it’s obviously a huge, huge part of my game. If I can get that right, that sets me up well for the rest of my tennis.”
At Indian Wells, Draper improved his second-serve points won from 52 percent over the last year to 54 percent. He also used his accuracy to account for the slower courts’ effect on his speed, winning 78 percent of points behind serves to the T on the deuce side, and 83 percent on the ad; 40 and 39 percent of those serves went unreturned, respectively.
The serving display gave him the platform to play with more of the variety he has been striving for, mixing up his pace and coming to the net at various points. Against Ben Shelton in last week’s quarterfinals, Draper somehow manoeuvred his body to hit a volley that was flying towards his chest, fell down, and got back up to win the point.
Against Rune, Draper showcased some outstanding defense to go alongside his devastating attack, winning 43 percent of points when defending, per the TDI “steal score” metric. Draper’s average in the past 52 weeks is 35 percent. It was his rich mix of attacking and defending options, rather than a brute force approach, that took him to the title.
Draper is one of many ATP players who are facing up to how Alcaraz and world No. 1 Jannik Sinner have reconfigured tennis, but he appears better placed to embrace that change than some of his peers in the rankings. 1990s-born players, including world No. 2 Alexander Zverev, No. 4 Taylor Fritz and No. 6 Casper Ruud have openly said that they feel ill-positioned to adjust to the huge hitting and court coverage. Draper has studied them both carefully and gotten to know them well, too; Sinner is a friend and former doubles partner, while Draper was planning on spending the most recent off-season with Alcaraz in Spain before a hip injury intervened.
Draper is ranked No. 3 by his 2025 results, and has won 13 of his 15 matches this year, including 10 of the last 11. He heads to Miami as one of the tournament favorites, and then has very few points to defend during the clay-court swing. But the biggest challenge is the Grand Slams — the biggest tournaments in the world which bring the elongated five-set format in which Draper has struggled more in the past. His recent form, however, is making him believe he is on his way.
“I can compete consistently against top players in the world. I feel like I belong completely,” he said.
(Top photo: Andy Abeyta / The Desert Sun via Imagn Images)
Whatever you do, don’t think of a bird.
Now: What kind of bird are you not thinking about? A pigeon? A bald eagle? Something more poetic, like a skylark or a nightingale? In any case, would you say that this bird you aren’t thinking about is real?
Before you answer, read this poem, which is quite literally about not thinking of a bird.
Human consciousness is full of riddles. Neuroscientists, philosophers and dorm-room stoners argue continually about what it is and whether it even exists. For Wallace Stevens, the experience of having a mind was a perpetual source of wonder, puzzlement and delight — perfectly ordinary and utterly transcendent at the same time. He explored the mysteries and pleasures of consciousness in countless poems over the course of his long poetic career. It was arguably his great theme.
Stevens was born in 1879 and published his first book, “Harmonium,” in 1923, making him something of a late bloomer among American modernists. For much of his adult life, he worked as an executive for the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, rising to the rank of vice president. He viewed insurance less as a day job to support his poetry than as a parallel vocation. He pursued both activities with quiet diligence, spending his days at the office and composing poems in his head as he walked to and from work.
As a young man, Stevens dreamed of traveling to Europe, though he never crossed the Atlantic. In middle age he made regular trips to Florida, and his poems are frequently infused with ideas of Paris and Rome and memories of Key West. Others partake of the stringent beauty of New England. But the landscapes he explores, wintry or tropical, provincial or cosmopolitan, are above all mental landscapes, created by and in the imagination.
Are those worlds real?
Let’s return to the palm tree and its avian inhabitant, in that tranquil Key West sunset of the mind.
Until then, we find consolation in fangles.
When the director Rob Reiner cast his leads in the 1986 film “Stand by Me,” he looked for young actors who were as close as possible to the personalities of the four children they’d be playing. There was the wise beyond his years kid from a rough family (River Phoenix), the slightly dim worrywart (Jerry O’Connell), the cutup with a temper (Corey Feldman) and the sensitive, bookish boy.
Wil Wheaton was perfect for that last one, Gordie Lachance, a doe-eyed child who is ignored by his family in favor of his late older brother. Now, 40 years later, he’s traveling the country to attend anniversary screenings of the film, alongside O’Connell and Feldman, which has thrown him back into the turmoil that he felt as an adolescent.
Wheaton has channeled those emotions and his on-set memories into his latest project: narrating a new audiobook version of “The Body,” the 1982 Stephen King novella on which the film was based.
A few years ago, Wheaton started to float the idea of returning to the story that gave him his big break — that of a quartet of boys in 1959 Oregon, in their last days before high school, setting out to find a classmate’s dead body. “I’ve been telling the story of ‘Stand By Me’ since I was 12 years old,” he said.
But this time was different. Wheaton, who has narrated dozens of audiobooks, including Andy Weir’s “The Martian” and Ernest Cline’s “Ready Player One,” says he has come to enjoy narration more than screen acting. “I’m safe, I’m in the booth, nobody’s looking at me and I can just tell you a story.”
The fact that he, an older man looking back on his younger years, is narrating a story about an older man looking back on his younger years, is not lost on Wheaton. King’s original story is bathed in nostalgia. Coming to terms with death and loss is one of its primary themes.
Two days after appearing on stage at the Academy Awards as part of a tribute to Reiner — who was murdered in 2025 alongside his wife, Michele — Wheaton got on the phone to talk about recording the audiobook, reliving his favorite scenes from the film and reexamining a quintessential story of childhood loss through the lens of his own.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
“I felt really close to him, and my memory of him.”
Wheaton on channeling a co-star’s performance.
There’s this wonderful scene in “Stand By Me.” Gordie and Chris are walking down the tracks talking about junior high. Chris is telling Gordie, “I wish to hell I was your dad, because I care about you, and he obviously doesn’t.”
It’s just so honest and direct, in a way that kids talk to each other that adults don’t. And I think that one of the reasons that really sticks with people, and that piece really lands on a lot of audiences, and has for 40 years, is, just too many people have been Gordie in that scene.
That scene is virtually word for word taken from the text of the book. And when I was narrating that, I made a deliberate choice to do my best to recreate what River did in that scene.
“You’re just a kid,
Gordie–”
“I wish to fuck
I was your father!”
he said angrily.
“You wouldn’t go around
talking about takin those stupid shop courses if I was!
It’s like
God gave you something,
all those stories
you can make up, and He said:
This is what we got for you, kid.
Try not to lose it.
But kids lose everything
unless somebody looks out for them and if your folks
are too fucked up to do it
then maybe I ought to.”
I watched that scene a couple of times because I really wanted — I don’t know why it was so important to me to — well, I know: because I loved him, and I miss him. And I wanted to bring him into this as best as I could, right?
So I was reading that scene, and the words are identical to the script. And I had this very powerful flashback to being on the train tracks that day in Cottage Grove, Oregon. And I could see River standing next to them. They’re shooting my side of the scene and there’s River, right next to the camera, doing his off-camera dialogue, and there’s the sound guy, and there’s the boom operator. There’s my key light.
I could hear and feel it. It was the weirdest thing. It’s like I was right back there.
I was able to really take in the emotional memory of being Gordie in all of those scenes. So when I was narrating him and I’m me and I’m old with all of this experience, I just drew on what I remembered from being that little boy and what I remember of those friendships and what they meant to me and what they mean to me today.
“Rob gave me a gift. Rob gave me a career.”
Wheaton recalls the “Stand By Me” director’s way with kids on set, as well as his recent Oscars tribute.
Rob really encouraged us to be kids.
Jerry tells the most amazing story about that scene, where we were all sitting around, and doing our bit, and he improvised. He was just goofing around — we were just playing — and he said something about spitting water at the fat kid.
We get to the end of the scene, and he hears Rob. Rob comes around from behind the thing, and he goes, “Jerry!” And Jerry thinks, “Oh no, I’m in trouble. I’m in trouble because I improvised, and I’m not supposed to improvise.”
The context for Jerry is that he had been told by the adults in his life, “Sit on your hands and shut up. Stop trying to be a cutup. Stop trying to be funny. Stop disrupting people. Just be quiet.” And Jerry thinks, “Oh my God. I didn’t shut up. I’m in trouble. I’m gonna get fired.”
Rob leans in to all of us, and Rob says, “Hey, guys, do you see that? More of that. Do that!”
The whole time when you’re a kid actor, you’re just around all these adults who are constantly telling you to grow up. They’re mad that you’re being a kid. Rob just created an environment where not only was it supported that we would be kids — and have fun, and follow those kid instincts and do what was natural — it was expected. It was encouraged. We were supposed to do it.
They chanted together:
“I don’t shut up,
I grow up.
And when I look at you I throw up.”
“Then your mother goes around the corner
and licks it up,”
I said, and hauled ass out of there,
giving them the finger over my shoulder as I went.
I never had any friends later on
like the ones I had when I was twelve.
Jesus, did you?
When we were at the Oscars, I looked at Jerry. And we looked at this remarkable assemblage of the most amazingly talented, beautiful artists and storytellers. We looked around, and Jerry leans down, and he said, “We all got our start with Rob Reiner. He trusted every single one of us.”
And to stand there for him, when I really thought that I would be standing with him to talk about this stuff — it was a lot.
“I was really really really excited — like jumping up and down.”
The scene Wheaton was most looking forward to narrating: the tale of Lard Ass Hogan.
I was so excited to narrate it. It’s a great story! It’s a funny story. It’s such a lovely break — it’s an emotional and tonal shift from what’s happening in the movie.
I know this as a writer: You work to increase and release tension throughout a narrative, and Stephen King uses humor really effectively to release that tension. But it also raises the stakes, because we have these moments of joy and these moments of things being very silly in the midst of a lot of intensity.
That’s why the story of Lard Ass Hogan is so fun for me to tell. Because in the middle of that, we stop to do something that’s very, very fun, and very silly and very celebratory.
“Will you shut up and let him tell it?”
Teddy hollered.
Vern blinked.
“Sure. Yeah.
Okay.”
“Go on, Gordie,”
Chris said. “It’s not really much—”
“Naw,
we don’t expect much from a wet end like you,”
Teddy said,
“but tell it anyway.”
I cleared my throat. “So anyway.
It’s Pioneer Days,
and on the last night
they have these three big events.
There’s an egg-roll for the little kids and a sack-race for kids that are like eight or nine,
and then there’s the pie-eating contest.
And the main guy of the story
is this fat kid nobody likes
named Davie Hogan.”
When I narrate this story — whenever there is a moment of levity or humor, whenever there are those brief little moments that are the seasoning of the meal that makes it all so real and relatable — yes, it was very important to me to capture those moments.
I’m shifting in my chair, so I can feel each of those characters. It’s something that doesn’t exist in live action. It doesn’t exist in any other media.
“I feel the loss.”
Wheaton remembers River Phoenix.
The novella “The Body” is very much about Gordie remembering Chris. It’s darker, and it’s more painful, than the movie is.
I’ve been watching the movie on this tour and seeing River a lot. I remember him as a 14- and 15-year-old kid who just seemed so much older, and so much more experienced and so much wiser than me, and I’m only a year younger than him.
What hurts me now, and what I really felt when I was narrating this, is knowing what River was going through then. We didn’t know. I still don’t know the extent of how he was mistreated, but I know that he was. I know that adults failed him. That he should have been protected in every way that matters. And he just wasn’t.
And I, like Gordie, remember a boy who was loving. So loving, and generous and cared deeply about everyone around him, all the time. Who deserved to live a full life. Who had so much to offer the world. And it’s so unfair that he’s gone and taken from us. I had to go through a decades-long grieving process to come to terms with him dying.
Near the end
of 1971,
Chris
went into a Chicken Delight in Portland
to get a three-piece Snack Bucket.
Just ahead of him,
two men started arguing
about which one had been first in line. One of them pulled a knife.
Chris,
who had always been the best of us
at making peace,
stepped between them and was stabbed in the throat.
The man with the knife had spent time in four different institutions;
he had been released from Shawshank State Prison
only the week before.
Chris died almost instantly.
It is a privilege that I was allowed to tell this story. I get to tell Gordie Lachance’s story as originally imagined by Stephen King, with all of the experience of having lived my whole adult life with the memory of spending three months in Gordie Lachance’s skin.
Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about printed works that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions and more. This week’s challenge highlights offbeat television shows that began as comic books. Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the comics and their screen versions.
Retired Detroit sergeant faces new sexual assault charge involving 14-year-old victim from 2002
Trump floats sending federal agents to San Francisco to tackle crime
Dallas ISD will offer free pre-K starting next school year
Norwegian Cruise Line offers a first look at Luna, new cruise ship setting sail from PortMiami – WSVN 7News | Miami News, Weather, Sports | Fort Lauderdale
Boston ‘No Kings’ rally expected to draw 100,000; others planned across Mass.
Florida High School Football Rankings: Top 25 teams – Oct. 21
How old is Bo Nix? What to know about Oregon quarterback ahead of 2024 NFL Draft
Cleary's 21 help Le Moyne down Central Connecticut State 69-64 in OT
99th annual Pony Swim held in Virginia
Indiana Members Credit Union announced as new anchor tenant at Bottleworks District
Video: Will ICE Change Under Its New Leader?
DHS shutdown breakthrough comes at cost for Republicans as funding fights nears end
Rubio joins crucial G7 talks as Iran war set to dominate second day
A surprise resignation could open the door for an independent to win a Montana Senate seat
Video: Savannah Guthrie Says She Believes Her Mother Was Taken for Ransom
-
Detroit, MI1 week agoDrummer Brian Pastoria, longtime Detroit music advocate, dies at 68
-
Science1 week agoHow a Melting Glacier in Antarctica Could Affect Tens of Millions Around the Globe
-
Science1 week agoI had to man up and get a mammogram
-
Movie Reviews1 week ago‘Youth’ Twitter review: Ken Karunaas impresses audiences; Suraj Venjaramoodu adds charm; music wins praise | – The Times of India
-
Sports6 days agoIOC addresses execution of 19-year-old Iranian wrestler Saleh Mohammadi
-
New Mexico5 days agoClovis shooting leaves one dead, four injured
-
Business1 week agoDisney’s new CEO says his focus is on storytelling and creativity
-
Technology5 days agoYouTube job scam text: How to spot it fast