The ‘animal instinct’ that Britain’s next tennis star Jack Draper has needed to survive

“My Pa, who is Nana’s main carer, still brings her to the National Tennis Centre in Roehampton to watch me train, but she doesn’t know who I am. And if my tennis matches are on TV, he will tell Nana it’s me but it doesn’t register with her anymore.”

Sherring explained how Draper’s mother, in particular, had equipped him well for life’s challenges, however. “Look, I just want him to do well at school,” she would tell Sherring, who added: “It was all very low key. And when I took him away, she’d make sure that he learned 10 new words every day on his English vocab. It was just very normal.”

Draper’s lack of height, however, would ensure he was a fighter. “You focus a lot more on being tough, pushing hard, working hard, because you don’t have the early advantage of being sort of like 6ft 2ins at 14,” said Sherring. “Jack was one of the smallest guys around. So he just had to try extremely hard. 

“Things like that are actually a bit of a blessing to later, and I think that’s what got him through his first round [a five-set success against Swedish qualifier Elias Ymer]. A toughness, a grit, a determination, a competitiveness which was all too obvious at a younger age. He was just an animal then.”

After Draper beat Alcaraz at Queen’s, there were no outlandish celebrations. Instead, he invited Sherring to watch Euro 2024 matches with him.

“It’s great to have the distractions,” said Sherring, also referring to Draper’s modelling deal. “He’ll get used to seeing his face out and about being a bit of a pin up boy. It can only help in the all-encompassing world of tennis.”