- Draper beat Brandon Nakashima 6-4, 5-7, 6-4 to set up a Queen’s semi-final
- His victory ensures he will have a high seeding for Wimbledon and a better draw
- However, he has a lot to work on and is struggling with the switch to grass
In his on-court interview after reaching a first semi-final on home soil, Jack Draper was asked whether we should rename Henman Hill in his honour and who he might face in the last four of Wimbledon. Safe to say we are all getting a bit carried away.
But it is so far so good for the 23-year-old in his first British summer as a bona fide top player.
For the second round in a row a deciding set was required but he got through doughty American Brandon Nakashima 6-4, 5-7, 6-4 and will play Czech Jiri Lehecka on Saturday for a place in the HSBC Championships final. He remains on a collision course with two-time Wimbledon champion Carlos Alcaraz, who beat French lucky loser Arthur Rinderknech 7-5, 6-4.
Draper has also guaranteed himself the No4 seeding at Wimbledon and, as was pointed out to him on court, cannot therefore not face Alcaraz or Jannik Sinner before the semi-finals.
‘Last year going in ranked around 30, to be inside the top four come Wimbledon one year around, that’s massive progress,’ said Draper. ‘A testament to my team, to the dedication I have had for tennis, the work I have put in on a daily basis.
‘I live and breathe the sport. I’m obsessed with progressing, obsessed with becoming the player I want to become and achieving the things I want to.’
As nice as it is to look ahead to potential Wimbledon semi-finals, Draper knows he will need to play an awful lot better to realise those dreams.
He has been scratching around for his best form all week, searching for genuine conviction on his groundstrokes. Against Nakashima it was almost like, on the arena which bears the man’s name, Draper was trying to play Andy Murray-style grass-court tennis: massaging the ball around, dinking drop shots and working the angles.
As much as Draper’s all-court game has developed over the last 12 months he is still a first-strike player, especially on this surface. He spent two months learning to grind it out on the clay and a part of his cortex still seems rooted in the dustbowls of mainland Europe.
‘There are definitely glimpses of stuff,’ said Draper of his form. ‘My movement, the first week on grass is pretty difficult. I’m getting a little bit better each time. I don’t know when it will come together but still doing well to be in the semis. Day by day, we’ll see.
‘It’s such a hard adjustment from the clay but definitely I want to be more aggressive out there.’
The good news is when facing adversity on his serve – as he frequently did – Draper went into beast mode, saving 10 out of 11 break points. He came from 0-40 down to serve out the first set and 15-40 down to serve out the match
He hit 14 aces and landed 67 per cent of his first serves at an average speed of 123mph – with numbers like that Draper will take some beating on grass.
The parochial hope was that Draper would have set up an all-British semi-final but his childhood friend and rival Jacob Fearnley lost 7-5, 6-2 to Lehecka in the first match of the day.
The 23-year-old Scot looked understandably weary after a three-set win over Corentin Moutet on Thursday, the hottest day of the year, followed by a doubles win with Cam Norrie.
It was only really in the second set when the wilt set in, though, and he would probably have taken the first were it not for eight double faults. From 3-1 up he served three in a game to be broken back, then three again at 5-5. ‘He was serving great; I was serving terrible,’ was Fearnley’s succinct description of the match.
