Jack Draper needs to prove he is not a Wimbledon choker

Telegraph

a day ago

My abiding memory of the anti-climactic early elimination of Jack Draper will not be Marin Cilic launching thunderous forehands and gigantic aces from his 6ft 6in frame.
It will be of the final point, which found a crabby Draper bunting the ball up the middle of the court and desperately hoping that Cilic would miss.
I don't want to criticise Draper, because this is perfectly normal behaviour. You've got 12,000 fans in the stadium, and millions more following on TV. It's so tough in that moment to play loose, to risk everything on a punchy drive into the corner. Somehow, though, that's what the giants of the game manage to do.
There is something weird about the psyche of a tennis champion. Some shard of ice that allows them to block out all the surrounding hoopla and play the ball on its merits.
Katie Boulter does not have it, as demonstrated by the fact that her winning ratio of 57 per cent on the tour – where the stakes are considerably lower – drops to 48 per cent at the majors.
Emma Raducanu – for all her difficulties in matching the power of the biggest hitters – has repeatedly come up with the goods in those clutch situations. Her tour-level success rate is the same as Boulter's (57 per cent) but she wins 67 per cent of grand-slam matches.
In Draper's case, the equivalent figures are 64 (tours) and 57 (slams) but the sample sizes are smaller, and there's no doubt that – unlike the other two – he has become a completely different player over the past year. Since the reboot of his game that followed a disastrous 2024 French Open, he has improved both numbers significantly, climbing to 74 and 72.
Upset alert 🚨
Croatia's Marin Cilic stuns Jack Draper 6-4, 6-4, 1-6, 6-4 to knock the No.4 seed out of The Championships 2025 😮 #Wimbledon pic.twitter.com/rZP6NQjWRy
— Wimbledon (@Wimbledon) July 3, 2025
While these statistics might be a blunt instrument, they don't lie. Andy Murray's career tallies finished at 74 and 78, but they shoot up to a towering 78 and 82 if you stop counting at the moment when his hip exploded in the summer of 2017, dragging him back to tennis mortality.
To win more than three-quarters of your matches on the professional tour is an astonishing feat. Look at what Draper has just run into in the last two slams.
In Paris, he was beasted by Alexander Bublik's sublime drop shots. In London, Cilic took him down with flat-hitting power and depth off both wings. You cannot have any chinks in your armour if you are going to reliably overcome players of this quality.
For all his improvement over the past year, there are areas of Draper's game that still need sharpening. He himself put Thursday night's loss down to 'a hole' in his technique, saying 'I wasn't able to deal with his pace of ball into my forehand.'
On BBC commentary, meanwhile, the Australian former doubles champion Todd Woodbridge took issue with the Draper slice, which he said 'sat up' too much. My own feeling, as I watched from the stands, was that Draper's fondness for going cross-court with his double-handed backhand played too much into Cilic's strengths.
But while we can quibble with the details, the point was that Draper stood within touching distance of taking this match into a fifth set, just as he had done against Bublik at the French Open. He had opportunities in both cases.
Harsh as it might sound, that's what Murray would have done: performed his patented crocodile roll and taken these flair-filled opponents into deep waters, asking them to live with him physically over the long haul.
Draper has the bodily endurance to use this manoeuvre, as we can see from a five-set record of five wins from six matches. He just doesn't yet have the sang-froid to execute it. And that's entirely understandable. As he said after the Cilic defeat, 'It makes me think that Andy's achievement, winning here twice, is just unbelievable.'
One interesting question is how much Draper's technical chinks play into his inability to find that big forehand winner when he most needs it. Quite a lot, I suspect. Lately, he has been shanking a lot of forehands on the most important points, which hints at a certain self-doubt. As the former British No 3 Naomi Cavaday likes to say, 'Shaky technique doesn't show up until you're under pressure.'
But it is still interesting to note the contrast between Draper's first slam of the year and the last two. In Melbourne, he came in undercooked after an injury-bedevilled off-season, but still competed brilliantly. In Paris and London, he has been unable to deliver at the biggest moments.
I would suggest that the difference lies in the dramatic improvement in his seedings – from No 15 to No 5 and then No 4 – and the very different expectations that go with those positions.
Draper is still getting used to his newfound stature in the world game, which – to repeat myself – is again entirely understandable. Tennis players have to learn these coping skills the hard way. It was the same for Murray, who reached his 24th birthday facing doubts about his ability to close out the biggest matches – questions that he would triumphantly answer in the end.
Knowing Draper, who combines an unstinting work ethic with ruthless self-analysis, I'd back him to make the same journey.