Jack Draper’s game and personality are very different from Andy Murray’s, but he’s not wasting time following in his footsteps

NEW YORK—Should American tennis fans be jealous of their counterparts in…Great Britain?

Historically, this has rarely, if ever, been the case. Tennis lovers in the U.S., for example, have never had to endure a 77-year drought between male champions at their native Grand Slam, the way the Brits did at Wimbledon from 1936 to 2013.

But as we all know only too well by now, the U.S. men’s game is in a bit of a home-Slam dry spell of its own right now. Twenty-one years have passed since Andy Roddick became the last American man to win the US Open. With Taylor Fritz and Frances Tiafoe facing off in one semifinal on Friday, there’s a chance that run of futility might end this year. But there’s also a chance that a 22-year-old Englishman with an action hero name could stroll in from out of nowhere and spoil the party.

🎥 WATCH ABOVE: Jack Draper's double-bounce controversy in Cincy ⤴️

It took just one tournament for that player, Jack Draper, to begin filling the oversize shoes that Britain’s last tennis hero, Andy Murray, left behind. Murray played his last major event at Wimbledon two months ago. On Wednesday, Draper made his first major semifinal at the Open, with a surprisingly straightforward 6-3, 7-5, 6-2 win over Alex de Minaur.

If you didn’t know before, you never would have suspected that Draper was 0-3 against de Minaur coming into this match. The lefty Brit took easy control of the action with his serve (he hit 11 aces), forehand (he hit 40 winners to de Minaur’s 21), and evolving net game (he was 18 of 25 there). Draper was in cruise control in the first and third sets, but when de Minaur made a push in the second, Draper upped his own intensity and didn’t let him get a foot in the door.

In fairness to de Minaur, he wasn’t 100 percent physically. Afterward, like a good Aussie, he didn’t want to be caught making excuses, so he didn’t say exactly what was wrong. But he did allow that he had been hampered.

“I wish I felt better, let’s just put it that way,” de Minaur said. “It’s tough. It’s a big opportunity. It’s a big chance.”

De Minaur may have aggravated the hip injury that forced him to withdraw from his quarterfinal at Wimbledon two months ago. Whatever the issue is, the Australian has had terrible luck in two of the most important moments of his career.

Seeing that an opponent is injured can also play havoc with a player’s mind, but Draper never let it get to him, and never changed his aggressive approach.

“I thought it was just a solid match all around,” Draper said. “Proud of my performance. There were some ups and downs during the match, but I felt in general I served pretty well, and, you know, I did a good job to come through.”

Draper also came through his own injury scare. Midway through the match, he had his left leg strapped.

“I felt something on set point in the first set,” Draper said. “I was a little bit worried about it at the time but then I played two sets on it.”

“I think one of the things this year that has helped me to sort of be better is, you know, I’m mentally a lot better.”

Draper’s win puts him in his first Grand Slam semifinal, and also officially makes him the biggest beneficiary of Carlos Alcaraz’s second-round loss. Draper easily beat Alcaraz’s conqueror, Botic van de Zandschulp, in the third round, and hasn’t been challenged before or since. It’s not exactly what he was expecting.

“I'm finding it strange,” Draper admitted. “In the matches I think a lot is going my way. I feel like in most of the matches I’ve just had to control what I can control. My base level is good, but I still feel like if I need to, I can improve my level a lot more.”

Anybody who has watched Jack consistently will see glimpses of unbelievable tennis. Draper’s coach, James Trotman

Draper can indeed improve his level, and he surely will soon, even if he doesn’t go any farther at this tournament. He’s 6’4”. He’s in the process of developing one of the game’s most brutal left-handed serves. He can create his own winners from the baseline, and, unlike so many of his contemporaries, he has a natural transition game to net. He matches up well physically with the Top 10.

“Anybody who has watched Jack consistently will see glimpses of unbelievable tennis,” Draper’s coach, James Trotman, said today.

Now, to beat the top players, his coach says, he needs to do the detail work.

“Adding layers, being brave in the right moments, it’s doing a little bit more with the balls, it’s making sure you see the short ball and the opportunity to take it,” Trotman says.

In a lot of ways, Draper is an anti-Murray. Draper is a British tennis insider; his father, Roger, has been head of the LTA. Murray was an outsider from Scotland who had his beefs with the establishment. Draper has easy power and a natural attacking game; Murray was a grinder’s grinder.

Eventually, of course, Murray became one of his country’s most important and well-respected athletes. We’ll see what effect Draper has on U.K. sports fans in the coming years. For now, they should be happy they’ve found a potential replacement so quickly. And those of us on this side of the pond should be a little jealous.