By the latter stages of the second set in his first-ever meeting with the best player in the world, Shintaro Mochizuki’s kitchen sink had already been tossed into the arena. The Japanese qualifier twice found himself down a break point while trailing 3-4, with Jannik Sinner prowling as he tried to snatch the decisive break.
Mochizuki saved the first break point by throwing down a cunning serve and volley, ending it with a majestic high backhand volley winner, then he scuppered Sinner’s second chance with two more beautiful volleys in succession, effortlessly executing an outlandishly-angled lunging volley to kill the point. He somehow survived the breathless 12-minute service game to keep himself in contention.
The headline from this match is another confidence-boosting victory for Sinner, who marched into the quarter-finals with a 6-3, 7-6 (0), 6-3 victory, his momentum increasing. The tension he betrayed in his narrow five-set opening round win against Miomir Kecmanovic, where he was erratic with his ground strokes, already feels like a long time ago. He continues to serve at such a high level and he is striking the ball with greater cleanliness off the ground. He is exactly where he wants to be in this tournament after four rounds.
For those watching on Centre Court and BBC One, however, perhaps the most prevalent emotion at the end of this match was the utter joy of seeing such a resourceful, courageous opponent who has been the protagonist of one of the most endearing stories of this tournament so far. Standing at a very slight 5ft 9in, Mochizuki is one of the smallest players in a sport where power has become such an essential attribute.
Smaller tennis players are often damned to a life of scrapping behind the baseline and grinding opponents down, charged with making up for their lack of firepower by finding other less attractive ways to prevail. From early in his career, Mochizuki chose a different path. His serve is vulnerable, yet the 23-year-old spends most of his matches cunningly devising ways to take advantage of his immaculate volleying skills by sneaking into the net. Mochizuki would struggle to crack open an egg with the ball speed generated by his forehand, but he is a master at drawing on his immaculate hand-eye coordination, timing and advanced court positioning to punish opponents by deflecting the pace they generate. He hits the ball with practically no spin, such is the flatness of both of his ground strokes. Men’s tennis is a forehand-dominant sport, yet his two-handed backhand is by far his biggest weapon.
Along with his low centre of gravity and excellent movement, all of those curiosities within his game combine make him a wildly enjoyable player to watch and they are also why he excels on grass. On his first evening on Centre Court, or in any of the grand slam stadium courts, Mochizuki showed all of those layers to his skilful, instinctive style against an opponent several weight classes above him.
Mochizuki’s physicality has long been his greatest impediment, which is underlined by his results coming into the tournament. Before the past week, Mochizuki had compiled a 7-31 record in ATP main draw matches in his career and a 0-6 record this year. A few solid results in the second half of last year had afforded him a top 100 ranking for the first time in his career at No 92, but once his ranking was finally high enough to compete more consistently against the best players in the world on the ATP Tour, he could barely win a match. There are so many players in the world who can hit him off the court, but the one place he is most effective at playing his unique style of tennis is on the grass.
Mochizuki was born just a month after Carlos Alcaraz in June 2003, and in 2019 he won the Wimbledon boys’ title. He has now qualified for Wimbledon in three of his last four attempts, and each time he has shown little more of his potential in the main draw. This year, his career best run to the fourth round included a remarkable performance against Rafael Jodar, one of the brightest young stars, to reach the fourth round.
After facing off the most devastating shotmaker in the world and generating a supreme highlight reel, Mochizuki departed Centre Court to a standing ovation. By the second set, the Centre Court crowd was living and dying with every point he played, hollering with glee each time he found yet another new way to close down the net or threw all of his 70kg body weight into his two-handed backhand. He played a great match, but the vast physical gulf between them was particularly told in the quality of their serves.
Mochizuki ended the match having landed 53% of first serves in the court, an endeavour that is complicated by being so much lower above the net. When his first serve did land in, it averaged 110mph. His average and fastest first serve speeds were slower than that of both Naomi Osaka and Aryna Sabalenka in the prior match on Centre Court. His puffball 80 miles per hour second serves, meanwhile, were eviscerated by Sinner. No matter how much he improves his overall game, Mochizuki’s serve will always be his great limitation.
Still, even in a straight-sets defeat, Mochizuki showed his 15,000-strong audience how talented and exciting a player he is and exactly how he intends to continue punching above his weight for years to come. On these lawns in particular, which his game is so perfectly suited to, he will be back.
