Short shorts, big game: Tomas Machac makes noise in Miami with breakout Masters 1000 run

“Who’s the shorts guy?” a fellow player asked as he sat down in front of the TV at my tennis club a few weeks ago.

No one in the room knew the answer, but anyone who has been following the ATP closely in 2024 likely does. It was Tomas Machac, a 23-year-old from the Czech Republic who has been creeping up the rankings, and going farther into main draws, for the last six months.

So far, though, he may be less famous for how he’s been playing, and more famous for what he’s been wearing: Those shorts that caught the eye of my club-mate. Machac wears them as high as any male player since the hot-pants heyday of Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe.

Asked about this fashion choice after his fourth-round win, Machac, who signed a clothing contract with Joma last fall, answered by pulling his shorts up even higher and listening to the Miami crowd signal its approval.

Whether Machac turns out to be a trendsetter may depend on how far he rises in the rankings, and how often we see him in the later rounds of tournaments like Miami. Coming into this week, he was ranked a modest 60th, in between two other promising young Czechs, 27th-ranked Jiri Lehecka and 70th-ranked Jakub Mensik. But that will change now that he has reached his first Masters 1000 quarterfinal, a run that includes the biggest win of his career, over Andrey Rublev, and the most dramatic, in a third-set tiebreaker, over Andy Murray

“I’m starting to believe in myself a little bit,” Machac told reporters after beating Matteo Arnaldi in straights sets on Tuesday. “It’s not easy, you need to work, work work.”

Harder than the physical work, according to Machac, is the weekly mental battle. You need to keep your faith in your game through the inevitable defeats.

“Even if you lose three matches in a row, four matches in a row,” he said, “you need to believe in yourself.”

On the other side of that equation, nothing helps more than a string of victories—enough of them that you start to get used to the feeling. Machac had that experience last fall, after the US Open, when he tore through three straight Challenger events in France. He won two of them, made the final of a a third, and went 14-1 over the span of a month. Since then, his ATP results have picked up as well.

“Against the great guys I started playing better and better,” he told Tennis Channel on Tuesday.

“Solid” is the word that comes to mind when you see Machac play. He has a sturdy frame and a good serve and forehand, and he plays a focused, physical brand of tennis. The difference-maker may be his two-handed backhand. He extends through it fully, and likes to attack with it, take it down the line, and follow it to net. At 5-5 in a third-set tiebreaker versus Murray, with a packed arena roaring against him, Machac didn’t hesitate to annihilate a backhand down the line. It went for a clean winner that set up match point.

Machac is engaged to fellow player Katerina Siniakova. He says their relationship is a stabilizing force for him, especially at dual-gender events.

“I’m there to help her, she’s there to help me,” he said.

His other key relationship this week, it seems, has been with his physio. Machac doesn’t travel everywhere with him, but he decided to bring him along to Indian Wells, and the move has paid off. After he lost there to Adrian Mannarino, Machac did 10 days of fitness work before braving the Florida heat and humidity. The results speak for themselves. Even after surviving Murray in three long sets, he was ready for the follow-up match against the talented Arnaldi.

“The season is going pretty great right now,” Machac couldn’t help admitting.

It will need to go even greater in his next match, when he’ll face No. 2 seed Jannik Sinner for the first time.

At this point in Machac’s career, facing the Australian Open champ in the quarterfinals of a Masters 1000 probably feels less like a problem, and more like a dream come true.