Should add that Jack also signed a pretty good IMG modelling contract in June .... and looks very 'beau gosse', as the French would say !

tennistonic.com/tennis-news/305317/jack-draper-and-his-modelling-contract-with-img/

https://www.tatler.com/article/who-is-jack-draper-wimbledon-wild-card-british-tennis-player

cya wrote:

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Coup Droit wrote:

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Should add that Jack also signed a pretty good IMG modelling contract in June .... and looks very 'beau gosse', as the French would say !

tennistonic.com/tennis-news/305317/jack-draper-and-his-modelling-contract-with-img/

https://www.tatler.com/article/who-is-jack-draper-wimbledon-wild-card-british-tennis-player

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 This was June 2021

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 Yes, and interesting that so much grief has been given to Emma because of her endorsements and modelling or whatever, but Jack has escaped all that (and played so well) 

christ wrote:

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Coup Droit wrote:

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cya wrote:

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Coup Droit wrote:

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Should add that Jack also signed a pretty good IMG modelling contract in June .... and looks very 'beau gosse', as the French would say !

tennistonic.com/tennis-news/305317/jack-draper-and-his-modelling-contract-with-img/

https://www.tatler.com/article/who-is-jack-draper-wimbledon-wild-card-british-tennis-player

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 This was June 2021

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 Yes, and interesting that so much grief has been given to Emma because of her endorsements and modelling or whatever, but Jack has escaped all that (and played so well) 

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 Mr Draper didn't win a major and then hardly another game since the endorsements started to roll in, so it is hardly a fair comparison.

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 But some of the press for Emma is ridiculous.  They're making out she's barely got time to practise when in fact the commitments are less than 20 days a year. Also there are lots of reasons why Emma hasn't pushed on, which have nothing to do with endorsements, and are more related to winning a slam at 18 with barely any previous tour experience and then having to play high level tournaments without really being able to step down to get more match time. Also arguably the chopping and changing with coaches hasn't helped. The journos love to have an angle but they know it's an unfair pile on. 

Some of the stuff I've read on SM sounds quite absurd to be honest. Telling her to pack it in and she'll never win anything again and she should just become a model. She's 19 for goodness sake, she's got loads of opportunities to quietly build her ranking and mix up her tournaments. 

Draper has the hallmarks of a Slam champion

Andrew Castle - Metro, 2nd September 2022

With all the attention elsewhere for British tennis fans - Emma Raducanu losing, Andy Murray making the third round, Cam Norrie into the top ten, with Dan Evans maintaining top-40 form - I think we are missing the biggest story of all. It's the progress of young Jack Draper this year which has been phenomenal. Twelve months ago, he was ranked 272 in the world, but he is going to be top 50 after this US Open, as well as a candidate for the most improved player and the game's best newcomer.

While Serena Williams was beating Anett Kontaveit, the virtually anonymous world No.2 on the biggest court close by, on the third biggest stage, the Big Apple was loving this 20-year-old Brit play a truly fantastic match against Felix Auger-Aliassime. Felix AA is a pure athlete from Canada. He is 6ft 4in and has spent the entire year in top ten. He was semi-finalist last year, a quarter-finalist at the Australian Open this year and is expected to become a grand-slam champion soon. He is coached by Toni Nadal and, believe me, Uncle Toni would not be devoting this much energy to many others after guiding his nephew to greatness unless he thought they really had something special.

So that was the build-up for Felix. The takedown was by Sutton-born Draper - 6-4 6-4 6-4 on his US Open debut. This was beyond expectations. Draper, himsef 6ft 3in, only faced three break points in the match, all while serving for the first set, and he saved them all. He only got half of his first serves in, but won 36 of those 43 points. In sets two and three, Draper did not allow Felix to get to deuce. So over the course of his first two matches Draper has ony lost serve once - he beat Finland's rising star, Emil Ruusuvuori, in round one.

I don't know where this story ends for Jack in New York and I'm hesitant to over-promote a young British player, but any objective analysis has to conclude that he's a potential grand-slam champion. There are still huge gaps in his game where he will continue to work and improve,  but his coaching team, headed by James Trotman, and his family - all of whom are of a high tennis pedigree - are positives for Jack. His appetite for success is at the perfect pitch and he is surrounded by people who will drag him off the ceiling if he gets too big for his boots.

He's done the hard yards. The hostels of Serbia, Estonia and the Czech Republic are behind him. He has bypassed the need to play old gits like me in senior club matches when he was 14 and 15 and no longer is he playing his mum Nicola, his dad Roger and his big brother Ben across a mini net in the garden, refusing to stop until he won his own Wimbledon. Draper is exactly where he has always wanted to be and our gain is football's loss - he decided to leave the Chelsea academy at the age of 11 to concentrate on the flffy ball instead.

Many have played a part in his development - take a bow, Justin Sherring, who did much of the hard technical work while keeping it fun from five to 15 years old. And well done, Ryan Jones, for the discipline and the structure after that.

Win or lose his third-round match against Russian Karen Khachanov today, Draper is well on his way. Just ask Felix AA or Stefanos Tsitsipas, Jack's first two top-ten victims, with both falling to him in the last three weeks. There are many more to come.

Rich2310 wrote:

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Don't always agree with what comes out of Mr Castle's mouth. But on this occasion I more than agree. Draper is the real deal.

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Likewise, but while I agreed with the overall sentiment of the article, I couldn't help feeling that he was showing off his knowledge of Jack's early history a bit.

Coup Droit wrote:

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christ wrote:

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Coup Droit wrote:

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cya wrote:

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Coup Droit wrote:

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Should add that Jack also signed a pretty good IMG modelling contract in June .... and looks very 'beau gosse', as the French would say !

tennistonic.com/tennis-news/305317/jack-draper-and-his-modelling-contract-with-img/

https://www.tatler.com/article/who-is-jack-draper-wimbledon-wild-card-british-tennis-player

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 This was June 2021

---

 Yes, and interesting that so much grief has been given to Emma because of her endorsements and modelling or whatever, but Jack has escaped all that (and played so well) 

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 Mr Draper didn't win a major and then hardly another game since the endorsements started to roll in, so it is hardly a fair comparison.

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 But that's exactly my point:

1: Emma got a modelling contract and her ranking has gone down the toilet

2: Jack got a modelling contract and his ranking has gone up like a rocket 

Hence, the modelling contract might well be utterly irrelevant - not that you'd think so to read the press .... as Nix says...

Emma's current pickle is nothing to do with her endorsements (IMO) but because (a) because of the perfect storm of the 2021 US Open, she was too highly ranked in the first place, and (b) she got herself into the most god-awful mess regarding her coach(es). If she had been Leylah, and ranked 25 or whatever, with a decent coaching set-up, Emma could have modelled on every catwalk this side of Timbuctoo (and the other side too) and she'd have been just fine.  

And, again, as Nix says, the thought of being 'done and dusted' at 19 is ludicrous. Everyone (or a lot or people) said Dan Evans would quit when he was banned for a year. People said Andy would retire when his first hip op looked a bit dodgy. People seem to love the drama of such statements, of writing people off. And they're very rarely right.

And it's obvious why - we (Joe Bloggs) think: "wow, that's a lot of money, they could just enjoy that, not have to work so hard, not train, not do all the grunt stuff, why on earth would they carry on?" But they practically all do - even when they know they're past their prime, the extra money won't change anything etc etc - and that's because to get to be a top tennis player in the first place they have a certain single focus, a need to do that, it's part of them. Now it's just possible that's not true for Emma, as she rather fell into it while still not yet a full-time pro. But I don't think so....

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 Ah. I comprehensively and catastrophically misread your point. I rather facilely read your <interesting that so much grief has been given to Emma because of her endorsements and modelling or whatever, but Jack has escaped all that> as a condemnation of those that gave Ms Raducanu grief, but didn't give Mr Draper the same hard time (with a possible implication of sexism). I'm rarely right, but I'm not often that far out!

Sorry.