Jack Draper stuns reigning Wimbledon and French Open champion Carlos Alcaraz

QUEEN’S CLUB — Jack Draper says he has cured his imposter syndrome with the best win of his career a after downing reigning Wimbledon and French Open champion Carlos Alcaraz at Queen’s.

The British No 1, a title he has only held since Monday, took a tight first set in a tie-break before securing the match’s only break of serve to triumph 7-6, 6-3 in front of 9,000 delighted supporters.

Draper, 22, won his first ever tour title on Sunday in Stuttgart and in beating Alcaraz four days later he became the first British man to defeat the top seed at Queen’s in 52 years.

Draper will now play American Tommy Paul in the quarter-finals on Friday while Andy Murray faces a race to be fit for probably his last Wimbledon. If ever there was a moment for Draper to come of age, this was it.

“Coming here two years ago, beating [then world No 14 Taylor] Fritz, I had just broken the top 100, I felt a bit of an imposter at the tournament,” Draper said.

“I had been here when I was very young watching Andy play, and it was a completely new experience for me.”

Draper missed Queen’s, and the whole grass-court season, last year with a shoulder injury. The disappointment of that spell on the sidelines moved him to bring back fitness trainer Steve Kotze, who previously worked with Murray, to make him more robust.

“Having to miss out on the grass really hurt, but at the same time, I was nowhere near ready,” Draper added.

“I was injured all over my body. I had shoulder problems, hip problems. My body was just made of glass at that point. Mentally, as well, I wouldn’t have been ready either.”

But he is ready now, as he showed by serving out the match against Alcaraz without a hint of the nerves that have previously left his body contorted with cramp, like when he played another powerful Spaniard Rafael Nadal in Australia.

Instead it was Alcaraz who looked out of place and out of sorts, chuntering in Spanish to his coaches on the sidelines and jawing with umpire Mohamed Lahyani over the shot clock.

Draper meanwhile was in his element in front of a crowd that felt like they were hitting every ball with him. There were groups of friends he had met at Reed’s School in Surrey, back from university to watch their mate do his thing; there was his mother Nicky who was his first coach; his brother Ben who is now his agent (and to whom Jack threw a bag of dirty laundry for sorting out after his match); and most poignantly, there was his grandfather Chris.

Chris turned 80 last week. Jack missed the party, but had a good excuse: he was en route to his first career title in Stuttgart. Chris’s wife Brenda, who suffers from Alzheimer’s and for whom her husband has cared for the last decade, played a pivotal in her grandson’s tennis journey.

“My nan, she sort of introduced us to tennis,” Draper said.

“Even though she doesn’t understand what’s going on, it’s amazing for him to be here, be a part of tennis, be a part of my success. He lives and breathes it.

“I’m incredibly lucky to have such amazing people support me on a daily basis. That’s kind of what brings the glue together as a tennis player, because it’s such an individual sport and it’s so relentless and tiring and there is a lot of things that go into it.”

He added: “There is no place I’d rather be than here in London, here on the grass, playing in front of a home crowd.”

A coming-of-age win

Alcaraz had never faced a left-hander on grass, and arguably could not have picked a tougher opponent of that type than Draper, whose sliding serve Frances Tiafoe this week marked out as one of world tennis’s biggest weapons on those surface.

But he did hold a perfect head-to-head record over Draper, who retired from their last clash back in 2023 with a stomach injury.

A more physically resilient player now, Draper believes he has begun to eliminate physical issues that have plagued the early years of his career, and even on the hottest day of the tennis season so far he did not look to be breaking into too much of a sweat in the serve dominated first set.

The Sutton native did have chances, earning a 15-30 scoreline in each of the first three Alcaraz service games but was unable to make further progress. He came closest to a break point in the six-minute opening game, but a tie-break seemed the inevitable conclusion on a quick court where Milos Raonic broke the tour record for aces in a match on Monday.

The second-round match became a battle of who would blink first, and surprisingly it was the reigning champion, who last lost on this surface nearly two years ago. But Alcaraz produced three unforced errors to give Draper a three-point cushion in the breaker that was enough to allow him to burn two set points before converting a third.

With so little being given away on serve by either man, it seemed inevitable the second set might go the same way, but Draper had other ideas. There were 78 minutes on the clock when he finally forced the first break point of the match, smartly moving to the net to land a volleyed winner, and when Alcaraz hit a meek second serve, the Brit needed no second invitation; he hammered a backhand winner for the only break of the afternoon.

Alcaraz did earn one opportunity to break back, but Draper threw in a serve-and-volley move and made an awkward two-handed pick-up work, leaving the Spaniard aghast as it landed plumb on the sideline. He threw his hands up in frustration, a familiar pose on an afternoon when Draper seemed to do almost nothing wrong. Just 24 hours after Murray limped off the same court, his successor leapt in celebration. The future of British tennis might just be now