JACK’S THE LAD
British 16-year-old wins second title in two weeks
A16-YEAR-olD who wins a professional tennis title gains a quiet nod of recognition among the
cognoscenti. Doing it twice in a fortnight causes a wider assembly to sit up and take notice.
This is what Jack Draper managed at the weekend, following up his victory at the $15,000 Futures event at Nottingham by doing the same at Roehampton, where he won the final on Saturday.
Already he had become the first British male since Andy Murray to win such a tournament at 16. on this morning’s rankings he becomes the only player of his age to be ranked in the top 1,000, comfortably so at around 620.
Comparisons with Murray may not be entirely helpful, but they date back to Draper making this summer’s Wimbledon boys’ final.
That was probably his last junior event. He and his coach Ryan Jones — who had long stints developing Kyle Edmund and Croatian Borna Coric — have decided it is time to wade through the quicksand of the main tour’s lower reaches, from which so many never emerge.
one reason for that is the culture shock of playing smaller tournaments after tasting Grand Slam venues as a junior.
‘After Wimbledon I had a week off and then I trained, then I went to Belgium to play Futures and then Slovakia,’ said Draper en route to his latest triumph. ‘It was a bit weird, from the high of Wimbledon going to Futures (the lowest rung of the pro circuit), no air- con anywhere, 40 degrees.’
Draper, from leatherhead in Surrey, is the son of former lawn Tennis Association chief executive Roger Draper, and has been steeped in the game as long as he can remember.
As has been noted, it will be beyond irony if the man criticised for failing to meet his own targets for producing elite players in his time at the helm turns out to have fathered one such product.
However, it is clear that it is Jack’s mother, Nicky — herself a coach and former national agegroup junior champion — who is now very much the person in charge. The Draper parents are no longer together.
With more echoes of the Murray story, Jack dates his tennis development back to Nicky’s time combining motherhood with her coaching work.
‘She couldn’t leave me in the house when I was younger so I would go and hit on the practice court where she could see me when she was coaching.’
His unusual talent, which has developed into a strong allround southpaw game with smart point construction, was soon evident. Jack, who talks in a confident and matter-of-fact manner, went on to Tim Henman’s alma mater, Reed’s School in Cobham. He more or less left at 14, continuing studies through tutoring.
‘I probably decided what I wanted to do when I was 11. I like the individual aspect of it. I was working really hard up until about May and then did GCSEs, waited for results for two months. And they came in just after Wimbledon and I got five GCSEs.
‘I’m done with school now because it’s really tough to juggle them together. I want to be a tennis player so I’m going to go all in.’
He loves playing football, but that has had to fall by the wayside.
‘In that last year I didn’t really have the time to do anything besides studying and tennis. After Wimbledon I have made more of an effort to get back in with more friends. You have to make sacrifices.
‘It’s trying to find a balance between being “normal” and a tennis player because if you don’t do that it’s not good mentally.’
After this Draper will continue his voyage through the tennis hinterlands by playing two tournaments in Nigeria, admirably realistic and aware that his burgeoning reputation makes him a target for others to aim at.