Struggling Draper boils over as the Wimbledon pressure cooker heats up

Jack Draper lowered his head into his hands and rubbed his hair to ­compose himself before talking ­tonsillitis and tantrums.

He was meant to head to Wimbledon as a Queen’s finalist but instead went home apologising for his temper and nursing a throat infection he said had been building all week.

To be the great British hope in Wimbledon men’s tennis isn’t the burden it was in the 77 years between Fred Perry and Andy Murray winning the title.

Murray lifted that curse for the next generation. But he didn’t make the succession easy. Home crowds can’t make you ready before you are. Expectation built all week around the 23-year-old ‘leftie’ from Sutton, south London as he fought his way through tight matches and setbacks to face Jiří Lehečka in a semi-final.

Building too was Draper’s tonsillitis. And his anger, after a mediocre start and up-and-down performance in a three-set defeat in, of all places, the Andy Murray Arena.

The prize was a place in the final against Carlos Alcaraz on a Sunday that might have made an English ­darling of Draper when he steps onto Wimbledon’s lush lawns.

Instead he goes there not as hot ­contender but an improver who can be proud of his rise in the rankings, aka, a work in progress. A grazed knee was a memento of his third-set clash with an advertising board – a fight that both the hoarding and his racket lost. The code violation felt less serious than the suggestion that Draper was buckling: an unfair accusation, given how gamely he fought back in games all week.

“I don’t condone, obviously, that behaviour, but at the same time, that’s kind of where I was at today,” he said of his hoardings attack.

“I was trying to use everything I could. I tried to compete every ball. But in the end, anger just spilled over a little bit too much.

“I’m proud of the way I went about things, considering, you know, but it’s tough, because you’re in a ­position where you’re in a ­professional sport. You’re an ­entertainer, an athlete, and you have no choice [than to soldier on when feeling unwell]. No one cares, you know. So you’ve just got to go out there and do the best you can. I’m proud of that. I gave myself a chance.”

The tonsilitis mitigation sounded genuine.

“When you’re not ­feeling great, when your energy is really low, you use everything you can to get yourself up,” he said.

“When you do that, when you give everything you have, not just in tennis, like in anything, you’re obviously a bit less mellow and playing a bit more on a tightrope.

“So when you try your best and things don’t go your way, it’s easy to spill over. That’s what happened out there. Like I said, I don’t want to behave like that, in all honesty, but that’s just the way I sort of am as a competitor.”

The cognoscenti say this ­tournament affirmed a vital point about him: that he has fighting spirit, and will scrap when a match lurches away from him. There will also be those who say he missed a gilded opportunity against an ­opponent ranked 30 in the world. Lehečka, though, had not dropped a set all week and backed up his big serve with ­efficiency and resolve.

From 1936 to 2013, a succession of male triers threw themselves at Wimbledon history’s wall knowing it would probably repel them. The best was Tim Henman, who reached four semi-finals between 1998 and 2002 but found a ­nemesis in Pete Sampras. Mostly the Brits were ­fodder for why-oh-why ­editorials when they passed from darlings to duds (Virginia Wade won the ­women’s ­singles for Britain in 1977).

With Murray retired, Draper is ­easing past Cameron Norrie as the Brit most likely to challenge Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner. For Centre Court crowds and the millions on British sofas, watching the homegrown hero is no longer a matter of mortification, as it was in the 77-year hiatus. Draper will feel the heat, and the endless scrutiny, but the redeemer’s job has been done – by Murray.

Draper is the first British singles player to be seeded in the top-four at Wimbledon since 2017. Bragging rights are not the big gain there. It would be the semi-finals at the ­earliest before Draper could run into Alcaraz or Sinner, who ­entertained Paris so richly in the French Open final.

Ranked 28 last year, Draper has yet to make an impression on the All England Club’s jamboree. His best finishes in four outings were the second-round in 2022 and again 12 months ago. His 2024 US Open semi-final appearance confirmed his potential. His defeat here to Lehečka underlined the Wimbledon crowd’s need for patience. He will, however, gladly use their support.

“I think it’s a privilege to be in the position I’m in, and I’m going to go to Wimbledon and I’m going to feel amazing,” he said. “I’m going to feel great about myself.

“I’ll prepare properly and I’ll ­prepare the best I can to play some of my best tennis there. I think the home support I have received is going to help me to do well.”

A flash of temper won’t cost him the Wimbledon crowd’s affection, but after this defeat they will see his chances – at this stage in his career – more realistically.

Photograph by Adrian Dennis/AFP via Getty Images