A Guide to Botic van de Zandschulp's Patient Game

Start with the player, not the upset

The 2021 run matters because it was not handed to him by a ranking line. The US Open says he won three qualifying matches, then beat Casper Ruud and Diego Schwartzman before reaching the quarterfinals. His federation likewise records that route and notes that he took a set from eventual champion Daniil Medvedev in that quarterfinal. That is better context than calling him surprising and walking away. It shows a player who has already managed the unglamorous extra work of qualifying, then kept enough composure to carry a difficult run into the second week.

His advantage is the menu

Coach Peter Lucassen gave the clearest description in the Dutch federation feature: he called van de Zandschulp a thinker who opens conversations about his own game and the opponent's, and said the player likes to dissect an opponent before delivering the final blow. The article's chess metaphor is the useful part. It is not a promise that every match will be neat or serene. Instead, it describes a habit of looking for a pattern before trying to overpower it. That coaching account is much more revealing than a pile of adjective-heavy highlights.

A tournament profile from the BNP Paribas Open calls his approach Big Man Tennis and credits him with eight Top 10 wins in his career. The label is playful, but it should not make us picture only brute force. A 191-centimetre player can serve and drive the ball hard; the evidence around van de Zandschulp also points to a player who has learned to vary height, pace and court position. That mixture is the more interesting reason a favorite has to solve problems rather than wait for the expected script to arrive.

A backhand is not one ball

The two-handed backhand on a player card is a starting label, not a complete description. His federation page links to an instructional segment framed as tips from van de Zandschulp on making a slice backhand useful. That does not license anyone to say he slices every ball. It does tell us that variation belongs in the picture. The USTA's backhand primer explains the distinction plainly: slice uses underspin and a different racquet path from topspin. Different spin changes the question the other player must answer.

That is why a quiet, low ball can matter as much as a loud winner. The USTA's slice lesson emphasizes a controlled high-to-level path so the ball moves through the court rather than falling into the net. In elite tennis, the point is not that a slice is exotic. The point is that it asks an opponent to adjust height, timing and intention. A player who can make that adjustment feel deliberate has made the court a little less tidy.

Why one ranking leaves things out

Rankings are valuable, but they are summaries of results, not inventories of shots, nerves or matchup ideas. The BNP profile's eight Top 10 wins and the US Open account of the 2021 qualifying run are historical facts, not forecasts of the next match. Still, together they explain why an apparently lower-profile opponent can make a marquee player uncomfortable. A draw tells us who plays whom. It cannot tell us whether one player has found the return height, backhand pattern or net invitation that the other player dislikes.

For readers who want evidence beyond a highlight reel, the Tennis Abstract Match Charting Project has shot-by-shot records for 113 of his matches, including serve, return, rally-length, net-play and shot-tendency views. It is volunteer-built data, best treated as a helpful film room rather than an oracle. Its real gift is modest and useful: it lets a curious fan ask a better question than whether a player is good or bad. Which ball is he choosing, and what reaction is he trying to buy with it?

The patient answer

Van de Zandschulp is easy to notice when a famous name is on the other side of the net. The durable reason to remember him is calmer. His profiles supply the frame, his coach supplies the chessboard, and the backhand material supplies a small technical clue: this is a player who can make a point feel like a sequence of choices. We can enjoy the drama without mistaking it for a magic trick. The nice surprise is that the explanation is there, in the patient work between the big swings.