Jack Pinnington Jones is enjoying the best run of his career as the Briton reached his first ATP Tour-level quarter-final at the Dallas Open in Texas.
The 22-year-old, who began the week ranked 181st in the world, has gone from qualifying to beating Italy’s rising star Flavio Cobolli for his first top-20 win, and then the USA’s Eliot Spizzirri, who recently took a set off Jannik Sinner in the third round of the Australian Open.
Pinnington Jones is one of a growing number of players who are breaking into the ATP Tour after going through the American college system, and he followed in the footsteps of Britain’s Cameron Norrie and Jacob Fearnley by spending three years at Texas Christian University (TCU).
After setting up a quarter-final with the veteran Marin Cilic, the former US Open champion, Pinnington Jones is set to rise 43 places to a career-high 138 in the world. A victory over the 37-year-old on Friday would move Pinnington Jones to the brink of the top 100.
The Englishman, who hails from Cobham in Surrey and is a close friend of British No 1 Jack Draper, stated that cracking the world’s top 100 was his main target following his Wimbledon main draw debut last summer. Making the most of his wildcard, Pinnington Jones beat Tomas Etcheverry in his first-round match before falling to Cobolli, the 22nd seed, in round two.
It earned him a pay packet of £99,000 - a reward Pinnington Jones said was “peanuts” compared to what top players can earn, but a sum he viewed as an “investment” ahead of his first season as a professional.
He made the decision to leave TCU a year before his graduation - in a move that echoed fellow British player Arthur Fery, the 23-year-old who reached the second round of the Australian Open in January having left prestigious Stanford before his fourth year.
A former No 6-ranked star in juniors, Pinnington Jones lost in the first round of Australian Open qualifiers before making the journey to Egypt’s Red Sea Coast for an ATP Challenger event. After reaching the final, he returned to Texas and spent a week with his former coaches and team-mates at TCU ahead of the ATP 500 event in Dallas.
Although they have taken very journeys in tennis, Pinnington Jones will likely lean on Draper’s advice ahead of his quarter-final against Cilic on Friday. Draper lost to the Croatian in the second round of last year’s Wimbledon, be he and Pinnington Jones are close friends having often shared car rides to the National Tennis Centre (NTC) in Roehampton. They also share the same clothing sponsor, the US brand Vuori.
Draper, who turned professional as a teenager and has cracked the world’s top five after winning the biggest title of his career at Indian Wells last season, predicted last year that Pinnington Jones would soon go on a run and be in or around the world’s top 100.
“He's somebody who is incredibly talented. He's, for sure, in my opinion, going to be a top 100 player,” Draper said at last year’s Wimbledon. “Like we've seen with Jacob [Fearnley], I'm sure Jack is going to be on his way as well to that because he's that good, honestly.”
