The Yosuke Watanuki tennis experience is a heady mix: non-stop smiles, mid-match soda, dizzyingly good winners. There won't be a better storyline out of the men's draw at Indian Wells. He's the lowest-ranked man to reach the tournament's round of 16 since 2004.
Ahead of Sunday night's third-round match, I thought that the world No. 379 Watanuki, a qualifier, would beat No. 17 Frances Tiafoe. It wasn't quite as spicy a prediction as it might appear. Watanuki had been playing well since he qualified for the tournament, and I was unconvinced by Tiafoe's shaky round-of-64 win over qualifier Damir Dzumhur. There was also one small but relevant fact: Watanuki was currently working on a trial basis with Tiafoe's former coach, Wayne Ferreira, who must have alerted his new player to his old player's soft spots. Watanuki had played mind-melting tennis in the only prior meeting between these two, at the 2023 Miami Open, which Tiafoe narrowly won. History said it was a pretty good matchup for the underdog.
The number currently next to Watanuki's name overstated just how much of an underdog he was. Missing most of last season with a knee injury tanked his ranking, and the 26-year-old entered the qualifying draw for this tournament by using his protected pre-injury ranking. While he'd spent most of his career at the Challenger level, on the basis of talent alone he could probably be ranked in the top 50. In the past he has picked off a world No. 12, Felix Auger-Aliassime, and made life extremely complicated for peers like Taylor Fritz and Hubi Hurkacz. Watanuki has a bold enough all-court game to upset anyone on the right day, and Sunday was clearly one of those days, as he blazed into the fourth round, 6-4, 7-6(6).
The unexpected part was quite how stylishly Watanuki pulled it off, with the shot selection of a tipsy Carlos Alcaraz, and high-difficulty shots spun from all over the court, each one testifying to his brutal power and gentle touch. He amassed a healthy total of 47 winners to go with his 31 unforced errors. He crushed returns and followed them into the net, applying constant pressure on Tiafoe's first serves. Watanuki earned some easy points of his own with an odd service motion where he steps his left foot across his body, then brings his right foot forward to meet it, as if casually ambling up into his serve. He spared the audience no flashy shot: swinging volleys, tidy drop shots, untouchable pace from the back of the court. He played with zero abandon and lots of chill, even at the most critical junctures of the match. When Watanuki made a costly mistake, like the flubbed overhead in the second-set tiebreak, he just beamed or hid his face under his shirt in mock dejection. If he matched Alcaraz in ambitious shot selection, he surpassed him with sheer volume of smiles, which is not an easy feat.
It's a testament to Tiafoe that he even kept the match as close as it was. Watanuki played with such palpable joy that he even won the crowd from his opponent, who has probably never played a match on American soil where he wasn't the obvious protagonist. Down a break in the second set, Watanuki asked the umpire to procure a sugary soda. He happily presented the can to his coach, took a few glugs and immediately broke back to level the set. Then he kept on sipping during the changeovers of the decisive tiebreak, too. Tennis has had a can-sipping everyman hero before, but this was a far more consequential match.
A fellow journalist once told me that Watanuki might be the most talented men's player of his generation in Japan—but also, fundamentally, a relaxed homebody. As a worldview, that's probably incompatible with sustained success at the very highest levels of tennis. There's a certain level of shotmaking, though, that is reserved only for these cool operators, who can deal with a spectacular winner or embarrassing error with the same equanimity. They're the ones who don't tighten up or retreat to a defensive game plan, but keep going for the grandiose shots in their mind's eye. At Indian Wells, that attitude has led Yosuke Watanuki to the best overall tournament run of his life.
