2024-09-05 16:50:01
NEW YORK — After the storm of Cincinnati two weeks ago, where he beat world No. 19 Felix Auger-Aliassime with an illegal shot on match point, Britain’s new tennis hero Jack Draper is enjoying a more serene and stunning U.S. Open.
The top British player is into his first Grand Slam semifinal, and he hasn’t dropped a set. Draper has been on court for little over nine hours across five matches. On Saturday afternoon, he took care of Carlos Alcaraz’s conqueror and Dutch world No. 77, Botic van de Zandschulp, 6-3, 6-4, 6-2, in a little over two hours. He dispatched the dangerous Czech, Tomas Machac, 6-3, 6-1, 6-2, and then put out No. 10 seed Alex de Minaur in straight sets on Wednesday, 6-3, 7-5, 6-2.
Draper loves this tournament, and has won five more matches here than at the other three majors combined. It seems to love him back, with many young fans on the Grandstand court not shy about expressing their affection for him on Saturday afternoon. Draper is 6-foot-4 and is rarely seen without a baseball cap atop his imposing frame. With a cannon of a serve and an intensity to his movement between and during points, his energy is similar to a young Andy Roddick.
Draper has a part-time modeling contract with IMG and has appeared in worldwide fashion titles like Vogue and Tatler. Still, he largely comes across as a grounded, unassuming 22-year-old who wears the status of being a rising star lightly.
In recent months, that status has only gotten heavier. The retirement of his friend and mentor Andy Murray has anointed Draper as Britain’s main tennis hope. The U.K. is not known for its rational balance between expectation and achievement when it comes to tennis, and on the eve of the U.S. Open, Draper said that with Murray gone, he feels “a responsibility to really play good tennis.”
In New York, it’s a case of so far, so good. Draper is the first British man since Andy Murray to reach a Grand Slam semifinal, moving through his half of the draw with something like ease.
Jack Draper’s best Grand Slam results have come in New York. (Jamie Squire / Getty Images)At the same tournament last year, Draper lost in four sets to Andrey Rublev in the fourth round, but he has changed his perspective on his game and his physical ability to win these matches in the 12 months since that defeat. Having been beset by a series of injuries back then, a lot has changed for Draper since his 2023 run.
In late April, he added former world No. 6 Wayne Ferreira to his coaching team, in an attempt to completely recalibrate his on-court mindset. That brought him a first ATP title, in Stuttgart, before he beat Alcaraz on the grass at Queen’s in London. Then came an early exit at Wimbledon, and the Cincinnati imbroglio, before he parted ways with Ferreira just before the fourth Grand Slam of the year.
This is the story of how Draper got here, and why tennis insiders and those who know him best think he has the talent and personality to gain and sustain a top-10 ranking.
Draper spent the week leading up to the U.S. Open in a position he never expected to find himself: Tennis villain. In Cincinnati, he was up match point against Auger-Aliassime. He served and came into the net. Auger-Aliassime returned the ball low to his ankles. Draper got his racket on the ball, which quickly hit the court just in front of him before bouncing up, clipping the net tape, and bouncing over. Umpire Greg Allensworth ruled it a fair shot, having missed that Draper had hit the shot into the ground. Allensworth called “game, set and match.”
Replays showed the umpire was wrong. Former and current players flooded social media to complain and to say that Draper would have known his shot wasn’t legal, like Auger-Aliassime said as he campaigned for a reversal. Draper should have fessed up and conceded the point, the players said online.
Draper said he was unsure in the moment but thought about nothing else for four days. In his pre-tournament news conference, he said that he could see that he missed the shot after watching replays, but that he didn’t know it at the time.
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“To see that stuff, people talking about you for the first time in a negative way — and questioning your integrity and stuff like that — it’s obviously difficult,” he said.
Watching on in Britain, tennis folk who have worked alongside Draper throughout his development found the situation comical. British Davis Cup captain Leon Smith relates that player transport staff at Queen’s love Draper — but not for his tennis.
“They were saying, ‘Please tell Jack he’s our favourite — he’s the one guy who comes in and says thank you. He’s the one guy who says how are you?’
“I like that. All those things, being a good person, will go a long way,” Smith said. Compatriot and house-mate Paul Jubb, the world No. 192, calls Draper “a super caring guy with “a big heart.”
Draper is now trying to use the incident as a valuable learning experience. Taking criticism is just one of the many off-court steps needed to become a top-10 player, and according to Ferreira and other former coaches, Draper already has the things that matter between the white lines.
His swinging lefty serve and big forehand can punch holes in his opponents, but he also has soft hands and impressive court craft. He likes playing at the U.S. Open so much because he feels that the medium-paced courts complement his mix of power and panache. Against van de Zandschulp, there were angled drop volleys to go with the 13 aces, and he has incorporated solidity into his backhand. Like Rafael Nadal, he is a natural right-hander but a tennis southpaw. This is not as part of a grand plan. He just happened to pick the racket up that way as a kid.
At age 12, while attending Reed’s, the same school as six-time major semifinalist Tim Henman, Draper was selected to play in a doubles match with him and Murray.
It was a great experience,” Draper said. “Actually Andy hooked me — I hit an ace down the T and he called it wide but it was in.”
Draper’s parents, former Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) chief executive Roger Draper, and tennis coach Nicky, introduced him to the sport. His older brother, Ben, is now part of his support team, but he was also a gifted player himself, representing University of California, Berkeley on the American college circuit.
Draper was a talented teenager, but he was also short, standing at 5-foot-5. A teenage growth spurt saw him shoot up toward 6-4 — around the optimum height for a male tennis player in 2024 — and aged 16 he swaggered his way to the 2018 junior Wimbledon final. He lost, but has always looked a natural on the big stage. In 2021, he made his main-draw debut at Wimbledon on Centre Court, against defending champion Novak Djokovic. Draper was nonplussed on hearing who his opponent was and unfazed in facing him, taking the first set before ultimately losing in four.
Jack Draper was unfazed by the surrounds of Centre Court — and by seeing Novak Djokovic across the net. (Joe Toth / AELTC via Getty Images)
At the following year’s U.S. Open, Draper reached the third round, but had to retire against eventual semifinalist Karen Khachanov with the match finely poised at one-set all.
That defeat summarised where Draper was at the time. Talented, but not ready physically. After slowly rising to No. 38 in the world through the rest of 2022, shoulder injuries meant he had to miss big chunks of 2023, including Wimbledon. He was ranked outside of the top 100 by the time he returned to tennis in August, just ahead of the U.S. Open, but the constant injuries were affecting his mind as well as his body.
“I was still very nervous and unsure before matches (then),” he said before his meeting with Machac.
“Whether I would get through this one. Am I going to cramp in this one? Am I going to break down physically in this one, get injured or something like this?”
Draper was sick of constantly picking up injuries, and of implications that those injuries resulted from not doing enough physical work.
“My injuries stemmed from potentially overwork, but also not doing the right things for what I needed,” he said on Saturday.
“I worked hard with trainers and a coach I had in the past. We worked insanely hard, but I broke down physically because of it. So it was always hard to see, like, ‘I don’t work hard enough,’ whatever. That wasn’t really the case. I just wasn’t doing the right work.”
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Frustrated with watching Wimbledon on his sofa, and having a body “made of glass,” as he put it this summer, he made changes to his team. He brought on trainer Will Herbert, who has worked previously with British No. 1s Emma Raducanu and Kyle Edmund, and physio Steven Kotze, Murray’s former fitness guru. One constant has been his coach, James Trotman, a prominent part of his team for three years. Draper trusts Trotman implicitly, and he parted ways with Ferreira because he realised he only wanted to hear one coaching voice.
The changes have worked for Draper, who says he is no longer “waking up every day worried about playing five sets.”
“I have so much more confidence in my mind and my body,” he said.
Since returning last August, Draper has made steady, sustainable progress, ticking off some big achievements. He won his first ATP title on the grass in Stuttgart in June, and earned his first marquee win by beating Alcaraz at Queen’s.
Less tangibly but just as crucially, he feels like he has developed an identity to his game. Draper has thought hard about the kind of player he wants to be, and after a poor clay-court season, he admitted that he had been “a bit lost on court, with all the information I had inside my head of how I wanted to play.”
The Stuttgart triumph changed his mindset.
“I don’t want to be a defensive player anymore,” he said in the wake of his win.
“I want to play like a guy who’s 6-4, instead of a guy who is 5-6. I think that’s really benefited me this week.”
A Queen’s Club victory over Carlos Alcaraz in London is the biggest win of Jack Draper’s career to date. (Joe Walker / Getty Images)
Then, ahead of Wimbledon, he connected the style to the substance. He wants to be an “aggressive baseliner instead of someone who sort of makes a lot of balls and waits for the other players to miss.
“I got myself to being top 40 in the world a certain way. But I realize, by coming up against a lot of top-10 players, that’s just not going to cut it.”
He still has a lot to improve — there were a few wayward drop shots against van de Zandschulp on Saturday — but the foundations are in place.
Smith says that Draper has learned from players like Alcaraz and Sinner when it comes to redefining his tennis.
“You have to know when to defend, and when to be a bit more neutral in your play,” Smith said.
“But you’ve seen Alcaraz or Sinner… When they get a sniff of something being there to be hit, they go after it.
“I think he’s on that flow now. It seems like he’s got it off his back and is like, ‘I’m going to play this way.’
Draper said he had felt like “an imposter” when he first played on that grass at Queen’s. After beating Alcaraz, he felt like he belonged.
With the Cincinnati controversy behind him, Draper is enjoying New York, while relishing the pressure of picking up the British mantle in the first Slam of the post-Murray era.
The two remain extremely close, constantly teasing each other as good friends do. Murray enjoys pointing out Draper’s allegedly posed “stance” in photos, while Draper said that “it seems a bit weird not having Andy there with his rancid, stinking shoes lying next to me in the locker room,” when asked about the absence of his hero and mentor.
He did then pay a proper tribute to Murray, encapsulating the two sides of Draper’s personality: Sincere but with a good sense of humour.
Smith, who has known Murray since childhood and was his Davis Cup captain for more than a decade, says Draper is ready to handle the expectation of being British No. 1
“I think he’ll handle everything, but I don’t think he should be expected to handle everything straight away. He’s 22 and has already achieved a lot of good things, despite having had a pretty bumpy road with injuries.”
“Jack might have the biggest game to go and do something,” Smith said of Draper’s position in the British men’s roster.
Jack Draper and Andy Murray embrace during the latter’s farewell to tennis at Wimbledon, in July. (Shi Tang / Getty Images)
His mind goes back to a tournament in Basel, Switzerland, in 2022. Smith stepped in to coach Draper while Trotman was unavailable.
“He played Carlos in the first round, lost 7-5 in the third and it was an unbelievable match.
“Jack backs himself, and he’s a better tennis player now. His ceiling’s high because of the way he’s playing now, with more offensive tennis.”
Draper is just as confident. He is in his first Grand Slam semifinal, but he has bigger ideas on his mind.
“If my game keeps on improving, I keep the mindset, and keep on improving physically like I have been, I don’t see any reason why I can’t be one of the best players in the world,” he said.
“That’s my aspiration, that’s my goal.”
(Top photo: Julian Finney / Getty Images)
