US Open: Jenson Brooksby and his still atypical game, attacking Carlos Alcaraz

The Sacramento King continues to laugh at Flushing Meadows. Impressive eighth finalist last year, eliminated by Novak Djokovic, which he had still kindly returned in the first set (1-6), Jenson Brooksby did not let go this year. Thursday, it’s Borna Coric, the Croat ghost, who had just passed through the sieve Musetti, Nadal, Auger-Aliassime, Norrie and Tsitsipas to win in Cincinnati – sorry – who finished on the side in three sets (6-4, 7-6, 6-1)!

Without seeming to touch it, with his loose game and a unique idea of ​​tennis, Brooksby again amazed the gallery of the Grandstand and laid the Croatian in the sun, especially during a second set of rather irrational resistant, where the young US talent, 43rd in the world, saved seven set points, including five in the tie-break to steal the loot, keep the momentum and definitively put Coric’s head in the bottom of the bucket.

Two finals and three top 20 pinned this year

To get there and offer himself in the 3rd round a nice duel of soft-skinned talents against the Spanish prodigy, Carlos Alcaraz, Jenson Brooksby did not revolutionize his way of doing things. His tennis remains, as in the early days, a matter of sensations and feelings. His serve does not ravage the plains, his technique is not highly recommended, his strike is not lunar, but his backhand is a fairly diabolical precision weapon, his sense of trajectory is disconcerting and his ability to settle and to hold the diagonal deep and safe can end up sinking a team.

So many assets that Brooksky patiently built up, despite a host of physical glitches that kept him away from the field fourteen months behind the US Open 2019! On a tennis court, the young man is a manipulator much more than a destroyer. The blond breathes the game and thinks before knocking.

Held back for the past two seasons by the health context and injuries, Brooksby seems to be fully launched this time. Finalist in Newport in 2021, he added two other showcase finals this season (in Dallas then Atlanta). Although he is still looking for a first career title, Brooksby has beaten three top 20 finishes in 2022, including Stefanos Tsitspas in Indian Wells, and exits a third round at Wimbledon. It is not yet the heights to which he aspires, he who claims to want to be world number 1, but it is certainly a beginning of ascent.