TWO PRINCES

At a proving moment in men's tennis, a pair of young challengers on either side of the Atlantic are stepping up.

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JACK DRAPER

By Alexis Okeowo

It's the left-handed thing. When you're watching Jack Draper, the top-ranked tennis player in Britain and the 18th best in the world, it takes a minute to remember you're watching him in reverse. He lives his life right-handed—but then picks up a racket with his left, and has done so since he was a boy. It's an advantage he makes the most of, crossing his powerful forehand to his opponent's backhand. "I'm a bit odd," he says. "I throw right-handed, I write right-handed, golf right, everything. I don't know where that comes from." As if to emphasize this talent, he has a big lightning-bolt tattoo on his left arm: not related to his left-handed skill, he tells me, but representative of him being "bold." He got it when he was 19.

Draper is six foot four, with reddish-brown long hair and the face of a young Kennedy. We've met at London's National Tennis Centre two weeks after the end of the men's season in Paris, and Draper is in what he calls "putting-my-body-through-hell week," his first bout of training before the crucial Australian hard-court tournaments begin. This bright winter day he's hitting with British player Cameron Norrie, another lefty. Draper, gangly and all limbs, performs a little hop-skip after each successful stroke. The pair are working on returning serve under the eyes of their coaches and trainers, and, at one point, the head of British tennis. Up next will be forehand drills, backhand drills, then sprints, then weights, and later on Draper will blast rap music from a portable speaker: Central Cee, then 50 Cent and Eminem.