Could Jack Draper be the new Andy Murray?
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Jack Draper, the British no 1 tennis player, has just won Indian Wells. This is a Masters 1000 event which is widely regarded as the 5th Grand Slam and there is furious excitement about his potential. The 23-year-old is being touted as a future Grand Slam winner. This could be ominous: we all know the dreadful pressure the press put on British players at Wimbledon. Anything but a win is apparently a disaster.
Draper comes from good tennis stock. His father Roger, is a former LTA executive and his mother, Nicky, a former top junior. They stuck a racket in his hand when he was three. His brother, Ben, also played professionally but gave it up to become Jack’s manager, so it’s been quite a family affair.
I saw Draper play in Malaga at the 2023 Davis Cup tie against Serbia. He played the second string (behind Cameron Norrie), against Miomir Kecmanovic, and although he lost in two tie breakers I thought the outcome was pretty predictable. Winning big matches is mostly about shot selection and ability to perform on the big points. Draper tended to go for wild winners in those moments, which just didn’t pay off. It seemed more about hit and hope rather than playing within himself. At that time he demonstrated naivety and what one can only describe as slight desperation and lack of conviction. The inexperience showed.
There’s a reason why the top players win a higher proportion of tie breaks, a real test of one’s mettle. They don’t play the crunch points hoping the opponent is going to miss. They have the confidence to go for the lines and it usually pays off. It’s called 10% perspiration, 90% inspiration.
But Jack Draper is a new man. To beat Taylor Fritz, Carlos Alcaraz and then Holger Rune in quick succession to win the Indian Wells title is inspirational. Success breeds success and he grew in confidence with each match.
Draper is now World Number 7, an incredible achievement. He’s ahead of Daniil Medvedev, Andrey Rublev and Stefanos Tsitsipas and within spitting distance of Novak Djokovic.
He’s 6’3” with chiselled features and highly successful as a model, appearing alongside Anna Wintour, a tennis aficionado, at London Fashion Week. It seems she’s replacing her poster boy, Roger Federer, in favour of a younger version. He’s been featured in Vogue and has a contract with IMG, the global sports and fashion media company.
Some might say Draper has a charmed life, but he’s had to battle through hip, shoulder and abdominal injuries and a ruptured ankle ligament. At one point he nearly packed it in, but decided to stick at it.
If he doesn’t get carried away by all the financial endorsements coming his way, with their packed off-court commitments to the detriment of their game, as Emma Raducanu did to her cost, the sky’s the limit. I’m definitely not suggesting he will win Wimbledon this year but, dare I say it, he appears to be a potential future Andy Murray.
The grass hill from which spectators watch the big screen at Wimbledon has been successively named Henman Hill and Murray Mount. We may soon be talking about Draper Dune.
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