Can Jack Draper emerge from the shadow of Wimbledon Centre Court?

After Jiri Lehecka secured the decisive break point in his bitterly contested semifinal win over Jack Draper last week at Queen’s Club, Draper angrily whacked his racquet on a courtside LED advertising screen, disabling a portion of it.

This was an uncharacteristic but telling outburst by the 23-year old British star, who later told reporters, “When you try your best and things don’t go your way, it’s easy to spill over. . .I don’t want to behave like that, but that’s just the way I am as a competitor. Sometimes I just play on a bit of a tightrope.”

Draper’s action underscored that with Wimbledon imminent, that tightrope is stretched thin and high. It always is for British players.

Winning Wimbledon is tennis’s equivalent of summiting Mt. Everest. For Brits, it’s like accomplishing that without using supplemental oxygen. As Andy Murray, the first British man to win Wimbledon in 77 years, said after breaking through: “It’s hard. It’s really hard. You know, for the last four or five years, it’s been very, very tough, very stressful… It’s so hard to avoid everything because of how big this event is.”

I live and breathe the sport. I’m obsessed with progressing and obsessed with becoming the player that I want to become all the time and achieve the things I want to. Jack Draper

Don’t be fooled, that stress and pressure that Scotland’s Murray cited only diminishes in quality, not kind, for Draper. The 6-foot-4 lefthander is from Sutton, England—a detail that will matter to some who want to play up the annual narrative that Murray put the kibosh on in 2013. Since then, Cameron Norrie has been the only British player to make a semifinal (2022).

“That spotlight is [always] going to be burning pretty brightly,” Tim Henman, the four-time Wimbledon semifinalist and broadcast analyst from Oxford England, told the BBC in a prescient moment in 2023. “But I definitely think Jack has the capacity mentally, physically and technically to deal with it.”

It was an accurate assessment, for Jack Draper’s coming of age this year—a process deferred by multiple injuries earlier in his career—has been a pleasure to behold. He has ticked off all the boxes required to be a legitimate Grand Slam contender, something he was not a year ago at this time when he was ranked No. 28.

Since then, Draper has been to a Grand Slam semifinal at the US Open. He’s won a Masters 1000 in Indian Wells, defeating in succession Taylor Fritz, Ben Shelton, Carlos Alaraz and Holger Rune. Draper also made a Masters 1000 final on clay in Madrid, and wrapped up a breakthrough season on red dirt with a fourth-round performance at Roland Garros.

To top things off, his trip to the semifinals at Queen’s earned him the No. 4 ranking and seeding—the last British man placed so high was Murray—a critical achievement that means Draper won’t have to play either of the top seeds, Jannik Sinner or Carlos Alcaraz, until the semifinal. Draper’s table has been impressively set. But there is still this little thing about being British at Wimbledon.

Draper has found ways to protect himself from the burden of expectations. He doesn’t really pay lip service to the British tabloids, with their desire to whip their readers into a patriotic frenzy. Draper has rarely spoken this year about Wimbledon, let alone conquering it. Earlier in the year he denied having specific goals: “I just feel like I'm living my dream by playing on these stages.”

Draper’s caution is understandable. He battled significant injuries for roughly two years until about 18 months ago. During the down times, those childhood fantasies about being a big star and winning Wimbledon faded. “A lot of the stuff for me [when I was struggling] was kind of getting my head around the fact that it wasn't going to be I'm going to rock it at Wimbledon and win.”

That spotlight is [always] going to be burning pretty brightly. But I definitely think Jack has the capacity mentally, physically and technically to deal with it. Tim Henman on Jack Draper, 2023

In a discreet moment before the Madrid final, Draper did allow—without mentioning Wimbledon—that the dividend of playing well on clay would give him a lot of confidence going to the faster surfaces that he enjoys more. He said, “I think ‘Wow like, I’m doing this on the clay, what can I take out onto the other surfaces as well?’”

Draper’s most obvious skills peg him as a potential force on grass. There’s that ideal height that enhances a punishing serve that has all the familiar lefty juju. He’s good at the net. His forehand is king-sized but the secret sauce in his game is his backhand. Draper, like Rafael Nadal, is a natural right-hander who plays left-handed.

“It's always been my backhand which has been the shot,” Draper said at Indian Wells. “I can hit with my eyes closed, you know. I really have no problem against any player with their forehand into my backhand.”

But for all the benefits derived from a lethal backhand, big serve and wingspan, the main asset of the great Wimbledon champions has been their athleticism. No other surface pulls and pushes and stretches you like grass. As Draper’s clay results attest, his overall movement has improved markedly since his rebound from the string of injuries that blunted his athleticism.

In Madrid, Draper explained that he was small for his age, so he was “always just scraping around the court” without any big weapon. As he grew up, he needed to figure out how to rely on his defense but also to attack when the time was right. “The blueprint was, I'm a big guy, but I'm not just a guy who hits big serves and can hit a big winner. I can do everything on the court, and that's what I think all the top players are able to do.”

The pressure on Draper in the coming days will be intense, but his self-awareness and measured approach to Wimbledon should be helpful. When he spoke at Queen’s about his attitude toward tennis and his new status as the No. 4 seed at Wimbledon, he made it sound as if the best was yet to come.

“I live and breathe the sport,” he said. “I’m obsessed with progressing and obsessed with becoming the player that I want to become all the time and achieve the things I want to. It’s another step in the right direction.”

We’ll soon see if Draper can scale Mt. Wimbledon—with or without supplemental oxygen.