Jack Draper dumped OUT of Wimbledon in second round

 It's awfully hard to make it as a tribute act if you keep falling off the stage. For Jack Draper, that journey to the floor is becoming painfully familiar.

As with his three previous trips to these lawns, he departs Wimbledon before the third round and forced into newer, harder conversations about a talent that thrives everywhere except the green grass of home.

This one will sting not only because he was the fourth seed, and riding an exceptional year of breakthroughs, but also on account of how little damage he inflicted on Marin Cilic.

At 36, the Croatian proved you are never too old to wreck a garden party, and he did so by leaving nothing to chance on Court No 1.

He was a menace who went big on every shot, landed more than he missed, and inverted expectations in quite brilliant fashion. If we assumed that the 2014 US Open champion, and a finalist here in 2017, was washed up, then we were guilty of reading far too much into a world ranking of 83.

But it is equally true that plays a lot of his tennis on the Challenger circuit these days and Draper, the younger man by 13 years, should have had better answers for the test.

The reality worked out differently. Other than Draper’s surge through the third set, by which point he was two down, he barely had a sniff at breaking the Cilic serve and his own delivery, such a weapon this year, was ineffective. So was his forehand for large chunks.

Clearly, the burden of being ‘the next Andy Murray’ is an unfair one to carry, but the comparisons only have legs on the basis that Draper is good enough to warrant them. Not here, though, or not yet at least.

To Draper’s credit, there was zero attempt to make excuses. Nor did he agree with the notion that the pressure of following Murray may have been a factor.

‘I am obviously really upset,’ he said. ‘It’s probably one of the toughest losses I have felt. I thought Cilic played an incredible match and didn't let up - he deserved the win. But it hurts a lot.’

On the matter of living in Murray’s huge shadow, he added: ‘I mean, it makes me think that Andy's achievement of what he did winning here twice was just unbelievable. Like, it's not the pressure. I just didn't play good enough today.

‘I wasn't going out there thinking I was under so much pressure. Obviously you guys mention it all the time. It's just I wasn't good enough today.’

With that came an acceptance that his game on grass, at the Slam he most wants to win, is not close to where he needs it to be. Having reached the semi-finals at Queen’s last month and collected a title on the grass of Stuttgart in 2024, it was a mildly surprising admission, but those close to him maintain he thrives on brutal self-assessments. That they have been key to his success.

‘I've been really disappointed with the way my game's been on the grass this year, in all honesty,’ he said. ‘I wasn't feeling too great at Queen's - I don't know how I made the semis there. It’s highlighted to me that I really struggled on the grass.

‘I felt great on the hard, felt great on the clay, but as soon as I came onto the grass, I felt a big difference.

‘There's many areas of my game which I still really, really need to work on to be the player I want to be. I want to feel like everything in my game is secure. I think that's what you see with the top, top guys.

‘I think there's a bit of a misconception like, just because I'm a 6ft 4ins lefty, I must be incredible on grass. Obviously I've never gone past the second round here.’

The honesty had more bite than the performance, which followed defeats earlier in the day for Jack Pinnington Jones, Arthur Fery and Dan Evans, leaving Cameron Norrie as the single British participant in the third round of the men's draw.

For Draper, the first set was attritional, slow, a slog of long rallies and devil-may-care hitting from the big Croatian. His unforced error count was double that of Draper, which would have been a source of encouragement were it not for a different statistic – he was also smashing three times as many winners.

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The question was whether the native could shift that balance to a better place, but the answer was contingent on surviving. At first, Draper seemed up to it, which meant holding from 0-40 at 4-3 down with a delicious sequence of two service winners and an ace.

But Cilic promptly raced to 5-4 and then pounded Draper all over again to 0-40. At the first opportunity, Cilic slammed a backhand winner up the line for the set.

That killed the mood somewhat and more so when Cilic broke again for 2-0 in the second. Life on the edge of a knife was suiting him and one set quickly became two.

But then came the turn. The Murray-style comeback, perhaps. But the two breaks in the third set were a false dawn, just as this year’s championship was a false start.