On the first Tuesday of Wimbledon, with hot evening sunshine lighting up the deuce court, Jack Draper, the fourth seed in the gentlemen’s singles, was playing disconcertingly well. He was on serve in his opening match and,
as he said later, “I was getting my tennis together a little bit.” Draper, who is twenty-three, was the No. 1-ranked British player in this year’s competition, which is not an uncomplicated place to be.
Britain is a nation that ignores professional tennis for fifty weeks of the year and then focusses, raptly, on the beauty and skill on display at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club,
as if the event were an extremely successful garden party to which not everyone has been invited. The great British public, in floral dresses and questionable hats, will peer through the hedge if necessary. And this year it was Draper they wanted to see.
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