SERVE AND FOLLY

The annual British yearning for a homegrown Wimbledon champion.

- BY SAM KNIGHT

Jack Draper, ranked No. 4 in the world, came into the tournament as a plausible contender. It didn't go well.

On the first Tuesday of Wimbledon, with hot evening sunshine light- ing 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.

In the first round, he faced Sebastián Báez, an Argentinean ranked thirty-eighth in the world. Báez is deft but diminutive. Draper, who is about the size of a telephone box, was too strong for him; Draper broke Báez’s serve twice in the opening five games. When he was up 4-1, the crowd on Court 1 searched for ways to connect to him emotionally. After last summer's Wimbledon, Draper enjoyed a breakout year: he reached the semifinals of the U.S. Open and won the BNP Paribas Open, at Indian Wells, in March. He rose from twenty-sixth in the world to fourth. This meant that he arrived at the tournament as a specimen of unusual rarity: a plausible British contender, largely unknown to his public. “Come on, Jack!” two teenage girls yelled in unison, to make themselves heard. “Come on, Drapes!” a man’s voice called, reaching for familiarity.