Of the men left in the US Open singles draw, no player is less fancied in the eyes of the bookmakers than Jack Draper.
But the lowest-ranked player left in the tournament, at 25, will be perfectly at ease with his underdog status.
Like Emma Raducanu in her title win in New York in 2021, Draper has not faced a seed at this stage of the tournament, but, like his fellow Briton then, has yet to drop a set.
In fact, he averages just 8.5 games lost per match, and even admitted himself he was surprised with how easy he has found getting to the quarter-final stage. If anything, his only problem so far has been losing his focus at times.
After winning in straight sets against Tomas Machac, a top-40 player who Draper had never beaten before, he said: “I’m finding it strange. In some of the matches, I kind of lose concentration because I feel like it is going quickly and it is going my way.”
The Raducanu comparisons are not exactly pertinent. While her run to the title in 2021 was a bolt from the blue, Draper’s has been anything but, long since earmarked for the top of the men’s game. Since the junior ranks, people have talked about him having the perfect weapons for the men’s game.
There are echoes of Rafael Nadal in the manner in which he whips his left-handed forehand from the back of the court. And his serve, while prone to misfiring at points, is becoming an increasingly potent weapon, both in attack and defence.
A case in point is the fact that he has defended 20 of 21 break points faced on serve, his get-out consistently that arcing lefty serve leaving even the best defenders in the world at full stretch, heading — usually unsuccessfully — towards the advertising hoardings.
Every player has their own moment of breaking out into the upper echelons of elite tennis. At 22, in New York, Draper finally appears to be finding his.
As previously pointed out, he has always had the shots in his armoury, but not necessarily the belief, and there has been a rapidity in that shift.
At the French Open, he was irritated in the manner in which he had been too passive in his first-round defeat and arrived at Queen’s talking about taking a more combative approach. It was enough to knock out Carlos Alcaraz, but he could not maintain it in the subsequent rounds or at Wimbledon.
On the blue hard courts of Flushing Meadows, he appears to have found just the right balance, the only surprise to himself is how easy it has come.
He has not allowed himself to get down when his back is against the wall, and it was telling that the celebrations in victory have been muted, to the extent you could have been forgiven for doubting whether the match had ended against Machac.
Since the junior ranks, people have talked about him having the perfect weapons for the men’s game
Mental strength is another facet that has been improved upon. Before, there was a disgruntlement with his game, to the extent that he admitted to nearly walking away from tennis during lockdown and again in 2022, when all manner of injuries struck.
And it was interesting to see how quickly he moved on from the controversy in Cincinnati over whether that match-winning ball had bounced twice or not.
Back to the playing side, the courts at the US Open are clearly to his advantage, the spin which he uses to such good effect on serve and his groundstrokes exaggerated on this surface in these conditions.
But tonight he faces a step-up in class against No10 seed Alex de Minaur, the sort of scrambling player who will make Draper work for every point from start to finish.
It is the first seed he has played and a player he has not beaten on tour yet, plus it is his debut on Arthur Ashe, which boasts the biggest capacity in tennis, at 24,000.
For his part, Draper says he relishes the big stage, much like Raducanu did three years earlier. Emulating that achievement is no mean feat and yet, finally, the belief is there he can do so.
