How Jack Draper will fulfil his grandparents’ dream at Wimbledon

When Britain’s golden boy Jack Draper steps on to the hallowed Wimbledon turf next week, he will be fulfilling his beloved grandparents’ decades-long dream.

The 22-year-old British No 1 will compete on a career high, having been seeded at SW19 for the first time following a dazzling win over reigning Wimbledon champion Carlos Alcaraz at Queen’s earlier this month.

Cheering him on as he staged the major upset over world No 2 Alcaraz were his maternal grandparents Chris and Brenda Entract, who he credits with helping to shape his tennis from a young age.

‘It’s very gratifying Jack feels so strongly [about our role in his tennis],’ Mr Entract, 80, told the Mail.

‘He knows how much it means to us that he’s doing so well. We’ve spent all these years hoping that someone in the family would possibly make it and he wanted to make it. He knows, and I know, how good you have to be.

‘Jack would be down at the club in Sutton with his mum Nicky, where she was coaching, hitting balls against the wall when he was three or four years old.

‘He was outstandingly good even when he was very, very young. I knew he was going to be good.

‘You always imagine that he might be good [enough for Wimbledon].’

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Tennis runs in the blood of Sutton-born Draper, who went to independent schools Parkside and Reed’s in Cobham, Surrey. His mother Nicky is a coach and a former junior champion who trained him as a young boy and his uncle Jonathan was also a top player.

Draper’s brother Ben, who is now his agent, was also a talented player and had a tennis scholarship at Berkeley University in California. And their father is Roger Draper, former chief executive of the Lawn Tennis Association from 2006 to 2013.

Draper’s achievements – which have seen him dubbed heir apparent to Andy Murray, who he counts as a mentor and confidant – are all the more poignant as his beloved ‘Nana’ Brenda, a former tennis player and coach who introduced him to the sport, has dementia so cannot understand the dizzying heights he has already reached.

Retired industrial chemist Mr Entract, who has spent the last 12 years caring for his wife, acknowledges the sadness that Brenda ‘can’t appreciate’ Draper’s success after their years of watching him train and cheering him on at competitions across the country. 

He said: ‘I can be saying to her ‘Look Brenda, here’s your grandson, Jack, he’s playing’ and pointing, and she will just be looking at the end of my finger. I’ve no idea what she’s thinking, unfortunately.’

Draper has bravely spoken out about his grandmother’s Alzheimer’s to raise awareness of the disease and is a sports champion of the Alzheimer’s Society.

‘He finds it difficult that Brenda can’t appreciate his success’, Mr Entract said, but added: ‘I’m just sort of pleased I’m still around to see it. Jack’s fantastic with Brenda, he’s very loving with her and is always coming over giving her lots of kisses and cuddles.’

Mr Entract plans to be at Wimbledon to cheer on Draper during his match – and to offer the occasional words of advice: ‘I’ve been monitoring his progress for years, so I still tell him how he should be playing. He takes my comments pretty well actually… with a bit of a pinch of salt.’

He says his grandson loves family and friends coming to support him during matches and is ‘happy to show off’ his skills with a racket. And it’s not just on the court that Draper likes to show off, apparently.

In his spare time, SW19’s most eligible bachelor is an IMG model who has appeared in the likes of Tatler and Vogue, and once told the latter: ‘I quite enjoy being in front of the camera.’

Draper has also formed a ‘bromance’ with fellow British tennis player Paul Jubb, who he lives with in a bachelor pad in Putney, south-west London, after moving out of his family home in Surrey last year.

Figures at Dorchester tennis and squash club, where Brenda was head coach until the early 2000s and Jack’s uncle appears on the roll of honour, recalled Draper and his brother coming to play at the club in their school holidays and how even at a young age, they knew ‘Jack was always going to be good’. 

One told how Brenda had always been ‘keen’ on her children ‘doing well and getting to the top’ of British tennis, but her dreams had now been realised through her grandson.

Club chairman Alistair Clark said it was ‘just so sad’ Brenda now couldn’t enjoy Draper’s success, but that everyone at the club would be cheering him on at Wimbledon, having claimed him as ‘Jack from Dorchester’.