Jenson Brooksby He has managed to start the year on the right foot. The American giant -he measures 1.93 meters- has reached the round of 32 in the last two Masters 1000 and has reached the final at the ATP 250 in Dallas, where he lost against his compatriot Reilly Opelka. Brooksby, just 21 years old, is destined to be one of the biggest names on the circuit in the coming months.
The player born in Sacramento has already put Top-20 players in trouble this year, like Stefanos Tsitsipas, Nikoloz Basilashvili or Roberto Bautista Agut. Thanks to his end of the season and good start to the year, the American has placed this week in the best ranking of his career, being the 36th in the world. But that he occupies this position is no coincidence, since his style of play has allowed him to stand up to the best tennis players on the circuit, as happened with Novak Djokovic at the 2021 US Open.
A style of play unique to the circuit
And it is that the American has a very peculiar style of play and that differentiates him from the rest of the tennis players on the circuit. Despite his great height, Brooksby uses his punches to move the rival from side to side, since his great mobility on the track and his ability to move quickly from attack to defense make his tennis an annoying game for the rival. What’s more, concentration is one of his strengthsso he is usually very consistent throughout the match, so long matches benefit him and it is usually a great asset for him to reach the last set of the match.
The same defined his game as “unique”, since its versatility makes it adapt very well to any rival and to any surface. His ability to understand tennis leaves no one indifferent: he works well on points and looks for many precise shots, rather than abusing the power that 193 centimeters tall can generate. And despite this, his serve is not a strong pointas he double faults for every two aces and his first serve percentage is 64%, something unusual for players of his size such as Stefanos Tsitsipas or Matteo Berrettini.
Brooksby already made it clear in Indian Wells that although the public does not understand his style of play, he will continue to use the same weapons as before: “I think they underestimate me. Probably not by my peers, but among the public. They just tend to pay more attention to technique, physical qualities and things like that. I don’t think there’s anything about me that stands out in that, so that makes a lot of people underestimate me.”
As a good strategist, he studies his rivals before the games and that allows him to always be well placed on the pitch. His background game works like a wall, being a very difficult player to transfer with a winner and who recovers points very well when they go against him. Despite not having powerful blows, backhand is your key weapon and that he uses to take the game to his field and finish off the point from the back of the court.
The future is in your hands
In just one year, Brooksby has grown very quickly. Last year, at this point, the American player was ranked 232nd in the ATP Rankings. The 21-year-old tennis player has gained 200 positions in the last 12 months, which makes him one of the fastest growing players on the circuit. In addition, he already knows what it is to face the two best players in the ranking, since in the US Open 2021 he stole a set from Djokovic and in the Miami Open 2022, he put Daniil Medvedev on the ropes in the first set of the sixteenth end.
Now comes the season on clay, a surface on which a Challenger won last year and on which left good feelings at Roland Garros 2021, where he made it through qualifying but fell to Aslan Karatsev in the first round. We will see if the American strategist performs optimally on clay and we will have to pay attention to his performances at the ATP 250 in Houston or at the Masters 1000 in Monte Carlo and Madrid.
These next few months could be a before and after in Jenson Brooksby’s short career and position himself as one of the next candidates to be in the pomade of any tournament as is happening with young talents like Miomir Kecmanovic.
