By Chris Oddo | Monday October 3, 2016
A quick glance at the ATP rankings tells you just how big of a week it was for Karen Khachanov. The Russian jumped 46 spots to a career-high No. 55 on the strength of his coming out party at the Chengdu Open in China last week. For those that fell asleep at the wheel after the U.S. Open (or during an all-night Tokyo tennis binge) and weren’t watching last week, here’s what you missed: The emergence of a 6’6” phenom that plays with chilling pace, bruising intent and quite a bit of poise.
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Yes, Khachanov was really, REALLY good at Chengdu. He came, he saw and conquered, knocking off four seeds (Joao Sousa, Feliciano Lopez, Viktor Troicki and Albert Ramos-Vinolas), all of them experienced, proven commodities on the ATP tour.
That’s no joke for a 20-year-old with less than 30 ATP-level matches under his belt.
So… how good can Khachanov be? How good will he be? He can be pretty darn amazing—he already was last week—but nobody knows how good he will be. There lies the riddle that we will slowly begin to solve now that Khachonov has earned the right to compete against top-flight players on a more regular basis.
The good news? The ride starts now. Today begins the interesting part of Khachanov’s development, where the media starts to expect that he wins more matches and titles instead of just hoping for it. It’s a tricky challenge and it plays out differently for each player. We’ve seen Alexander Zverev handle that type of pressure like a true champ, and he could be in for a Top 20 finish at the age of 19. We’ve also seen Borna Coric struggle a bit with those expectations, and start spinning his wheels a bit just inside the Top 40.
Think about it: before this week did anybody think that Karen Khachanov might finish the year ranked higher than Borna Coric? It could happen.
There was a belief among those in the know that Khachanov had a very bright future, but his recent rise has been swift and accelerated, very much unlike the last two years. Ever since Khachanov announced himself as a potential talent on tour when he reached the quarterfinals of Moscow as a 17-year-old, we have wondered if he could one day be a star. It sure looked like it. He was big and played ferociously from both wings, walloping balls with reckless abandon yet remarkable, stylish power. He notched three Top 100 wins in 2013, and hype machines were revving up, but he dropped off the radar in 2014, and was slowly forgotten as other young guns took center stage.
Khachanov needed more time to develop, clearly. He went 0-3 at the ATP-level in 2014 and did not defeat anybody inside the Top 200. In 2015, quietly, he started to gain traction professionally. He won three matches against Top 100 foes and notched 44 match wins, including a Challenger title and three futures titles. He wasn’t quite there yet but he was finding his way, learning to win on his terms and waiting for his chances.
In 2016, those chances have come, and the 20-year-old has taken them. Eyebrows have risen as he knocked off Roberto Bautista Agut in Barcelona, Philipp Kohlschreiber in Kitzbuhel and then won his first Grand Slam main draw match at the U.S. Open.
Many probably didn’t notice. He cracked the Top 100 before the U.S. Open but never got higher than 95—until this week.
Now we can fire up the hype machines and brighten the spotlight on Khachanov. After his title in Chengdu his ranking is high enough that he’ll get into lots of 250-level tournaments and all the Grand Slams on his ranking alone. We’re going to see a lot of Karen Khachanov in the next 52 weeks.
How will he handle it all?
Of course it’s impossible to tell, but it’s hard not to picture a bright future after seeing the way he handled himself in Chengdu. Particularly stunning is the way that Khachanov plays when he is in his comfort zone. There is a three meter area, with the baseline at the center, where the kid is absolutely lethal. If he is stepping in and making contact with his forehand at or just slightly inside the baseline he is very often unplayable—and he very rarely misses
That is only one part of the arsenal that elite players require, but when one considers how well Khachanov serves and strikes his backhand, it’s easy to see that he’ll be able to control a lot of rallies so that he gets to hit a lot of balls inside this comfort zone. In other words, Khachanov hits big enough, and consistently enough, to regularly keep opponents on the defense so that they supply him a steady supply of crushable balls, ones that he can step in on and really tattoo.
Khachanov has a forehand that is reminiscent of Jack Sock’s (though not nearly as extreme or spinny). He has a one-handed take-back and it is somewhat hitchy. But his technique is simpler than Sock’s and his ball is flatter. It’s an impressive shot, and so is his backhand, which definitely calls to mind the gorgeous, grooved and lethal two-hander of Marat Safin. Khachanov is very steady with the shot and takes it up the line with ease, Safinesquely.
The Russian is still very much a work in progress. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, he’s got 15 tour-level wins to his name. He’s shaky from the midcourt, doesn’t really volley at all, and really doesn’t hit much backhand slice. His forehand can miss wildly when he’s backing up or deeper behind the baseline. He’s not a whiz returner but that’s par for the course when you’re a 6’6” dynamo.
But there’s so much to like about Khachanov that it’s hard not to get excited about him. And it’s not just his tennis that is exciting, it’s his demeanor. He’s quite composed for a player so young, and has a really positive vibe on court. He is a fighter, and he made that much clear during Sunday’s final with Albert-Ramos Vinolas, where he was struggling to break in the first two sets. Usually, it’s the experienced veteran who wears down the kid in a final like that. But somehow Khachanov flipped the script on Ramos and surged late, taking the proverbial wind from the Spaniard’s sails and gutting out a victory like a savvy veteran.
More than anything that calm yet intense fire was what was impressive about Khachanov’s game. It’s no guarantee that he’ll be a great player on tour, or the next great Russian, or even a Top 20 player. But what he’s done this season is commendable, even more so because it comes after two years of toiling away in Futures and Challenger obscurity.
Khachanov’s arrival has happened fast, but it has left little doubt that he’s got the tools to be a real deal. He hasn’t been vital part of the young gun/ next gen narrative for two years, but today he most certainly is today.