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The Guardian
03-07-2025
- Climate
- The Guardian
Wimbledon diary: England managers, SUVs and Jack Draper's facial hair
That's not just the diary saying it. Meteorologists have also been at it. With the heat dropping from 33C on Tuesday afternoon to a positively respectable and comprehensible 22C on Wednesday morning, there was a sudden shift in both temperature and behaviour at the All England Club. For starters, shorts and T-shirts were out, replaced by an avalanche of linen suits. Queues at the water stations had dribbled away from 40 deep on Monday and Tuesday, according to one vendor, to nobody at all. Even at the Wimbledon pharmacy, the small concession that caters to your short-term health needs, there had been a shift in consumer habits. In the first 48 hours all anyone had wanted was sun cream, and there was a wall full of the stuff as proof. But come Wednesday normality had been restored, with the most popular product once again the blister pack of plasters for people wearing uncomfortable shoes. Or at least Jack Draper is, the man-mountain British No 1 and adult human obliged to answer the question of what it's like to be the new Andy Murray every day. Draper was on the way to dispatching his first-round opponent, Sebastián Báez, with almost embarrassing ease on Tuesday before the Argentinian retired injured, but the home hope immediately walked into a more challenging encounter over how he styled his hair. Draper has until recently been sporting a beard but, while he shaved it off for Wimbledon, he kept his tentative moustache intact, which led to 'abuse from pretty much everyone I've seen'. The 23-year-old has now pledged to get rid of it before his second-round match, but promised fans that he would remain grooming curious as he builds his career. 'One thing you will see with me over the years is a lot of different hairstyles, a lot of different things, because I'm very experimental with that sort of stuff,' he said. 'Do I get bored? Yeah. There will be a lot of different things. My brother doesn't like it but there will be a lot.' This one is perhaps more subjective but the Diary and sources close to the Diary have been impressed with the collection turned out by Adidas for this year's championships. Called 'London Originals' and riffing on the styles sported by Stan Smith and Billie Jean King in the 70s, this 36-piece collection is obviously described in the blurb as 'modern but timeless' but they're kind of right. Queen of the look is Britain's Sonay Kartal, who has been wearing the cropped 'Climacool polo shirt' with its fashionable boxy silhouette (think Billie Eilish with a backhand) but with some classic argyle patterning and little touches of Stan Smith green on the arms and logo, too. This touch of colour stays within Wimbledon's all-white rules, something King this week said she thought should be done away with. 'They shouldn't have the same uniforms on,' she told the Telegraph. 'I shouldn't have to look at anything [to tell me who's playing]. I should know. You can change tradition.' Perhaps it's down to Glastonbury just finishing and there being a number of pop stars in the country with time on their hands, but the royal box could have staged its own mini-festival on Wednesday with all the musical talent in its cushioned rows. The Glasto headliner Olivia Rodrigo was there, alongside Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters, Nick Jonas of the Jonas Brothers and Tom Chaplin of Keane. With the rain passing early in the day, there was no need for Cliff Richard-style sing-alongs, which may have come as a relief to the crowd. You can only imagine the horror if Roy Hodgson and Thomas Tuchel – also guests on the day – had been tempted to join in. Sign up to The Recap The best of our sports journalism from the past seven days and a heads-up on the weekend's action after newsletter promotion SUVs. Those big boxy vehicles with their dual exhausts are all over SW19, usually sitting in traffic on the approach to the grounds. They're also to be found at the championships too, where Range Rover is an official partner and the British carmaker's vehicles ferry people about the place. A campaign group, the SUV Alliance, is arguing that this deal should be nixed, claiming that such vehicles pose a risk to pedestrians. They cite a study published in the BMJ's journal of injury prevention that claimed the risk of a child dying after being hit by an SUV was an astonishing 82% higher than if hit by a passenger car. Sorry to end on a downer, but that's the way of the world. Additional reporting by Tumaini Carayol.
The Guardian
02-07-2025
- Climate
- The Guardian
Wimbledon diary: England managers, SUVs and Jack Draper's facial hair
That's not just the diary saying it. Meteorologists have also been at it. With the heat dropping from 33C on Tuesday afternoon to a positively respectable and comprehensible 22C on Wednesday morning, there was a sudden shift in both temperature and behaviour at the All England Club. For starters, shorts and T-shirts were out, replaced by an avalanche of linen suits. Queues at the water stations had dribbled away from 40 deep on Monday and Tuesday, according to one vendor, to nobody at all. Even at the Wimbledon pharmacy, the small concession that caters to your short-term health needs, there had been a shift in consumer habits. In the first 48 hours all anyone had wanted was sun cream, and there was a wall full of the stuff as proof. But come Wednesday normality had been restored, with the most popular product once again the blister pack of plasters for people wearing uncomfortable shoes. Or at least Jack Draper is, the man-mountain British No 1 and adult human obliged to answer the question of what it's like to be the new Andy Murray every day. Draper was on the way to dispatching his first-round opponent, Sebastián Báez, with almost embarrassing ease on Tuesday before the Argentinian retired injured, but the home hope immediately walked into a more challenging encounter over how he styled his hair. Draper has until recently been sporting a beard but, while he shaved it off for Wimbledon, he kept his tentative moustache intact, which led to 'abuse from pretty much everyone I've seen'. The 23-year-old has now pledged to get rid of it before his second-round match, but promised fans that he would remain grooming curious as he builds his career. 'One thing you will see with me over the years is a lot of different hairstyles, a lot of different things, because I'm very experimental with that sort of stuff,' he said. 'Do I get bored? Yeah. There will be a lot of different things. My brother doesn't like it but there will be a lot.' This one is perhaps more subjective but the Diary and sources close to the Diary have been impressed with the collection turned out by Adidas for this year's Championships. Called 'London Originals' and riffing on the styles sported by Stan Smith and Billie Jean King in the 70s, this 36-piece collection is obviously described in the blurb as 'modern but timeless' but they're kind of right. Queen of the look is Britain's Sonay Kartal, who has been wearing the cropped 'Climacool polo shirt' with its fashionable boxy silhouette (think Billie Eilish with a backhand) but with some classic argyle patterning and little touches of Stan Smith green on the arms and logo, too. This touch of colour stays within Wimbledon's all-white rules, something King this week said she thought should be done away with. 'They shouldn't have the same uniforms on,' she told the Telegraph. 'I shouldn't have to look at anything [to tell me who's playing]. I should know. You can change tradition.' Perhaps it's down to Glastonbury just finishing and there being a number of pop stars in the country with time on their hands, but the royal box could have staged its own mini-festival on Tuesday with all the musical talent in its cushioned rows. The Glasto headliner Olivia Rodrigo was there, alongside Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters, Nick Jonas of the Jonas Brothers and Tom Chaplin of Keane. With the rain passing early in the day, there was no need for Cliff Richard-style sing-alongs, which may have come as a relief to the crowd. You can only imagine the horror if Roy Hodgson and Thomas Tuchel – also guests on the day – had been tempted to join in. Sign up to The Recap The best of our sports journalism from the past seven days and a heads-up on the weekend's action after newsletter promotion SUVs. Those big boxy vehicles with their dual exhausts are all over SW19, usually sitting in traffic on the approach to the grounds. They're also to be found at the Championships too, where Range Rover is an official partner and the British carmaker's vehicles ferry people about the place. A campaign group, the SUV Alliance, is arguing that this deal should be nixed, claiming that such vehicles pose a risk to pedestrians. They cite a study published in the BMJ's journal of injury prevention that claimed the risk of a child dying after being hit by an SUV was an astonishing 82% higher than if hit by a passenger car. Sorry to end on a downer, but that's the way of the world. Additional reporting by Tumaini Carayol.
The Guardian
01-07-2025
- Sport
- The Guardian
Jack Draper coolly handles Wimbledon pressure by marching past Sebastián Báez
For three long weeks, as Wimbledon has gradually drawn closer, Jack Draper has had to navigate the growing anticipation within himself and from the world around him; he has had to field countless questions about his ability to handle the pressure and, in the quiet moments, he has surely wondered how he would deal with it all. Now, finally, he can simply focus on playing tennis. Draper took his first step forward at his home grand slam as one of the best players in the world by defeating the Argentinian Sebastián Báez with a dominant performance, establishing a 6-2, 6-2, 2-1 lead by the time his opponent retired because of a leg injury. 'I obviously was aware of the buildup and all that sort of stuff,' said Draper. 'I think my preparation has been really good. I feel confident. So I'm not thinking too much about that. At the end of the day, I focus on the things that I can control. I'm doing all the right things on a daily basis and giving myself the best chance to go out there and do the best I can. That's all I can do.' This occasion had been a long time coming. Over the past year, Draper has enjoyed a long-awaited breakthrough in the sport after struggling badly with injuries and physical problems during his first years on the tour. He is now the world No 4, a contender for every tournament he enters, a grand slam semi-finalist at the US Open and a Masters 1000 champion at Indian Wells. While most British players usually enjoy some of their first notable results at Wimbledon, an unusual part of Draper's rise is how all of his success has so far come elsewhere. Despite his significant capabilities on grass, he has already equalled his best showing at Wimbledon with this victory. On Thursday, he will attempt to break new ground by passing the second round for the first time. His ambitions, however, are far greater. At No 38, Báez is one of the highest-ranked opponents a seeded player could have faced in round one but specialises in grinding opponents down in bruising, attritional clay-court battles. Not only is he uncomfortable on grass, a surface on which he has won just three matches, Báez is also in poor form and he arrived on No 1 Court on a six-match losing streak. If Draper was feeling the nerves of this occasion, they did not last long. After spraying two forehands well long in the first few points of Báez's opening service game, by the end of it the 23-year-old had already found his range on his forehand and he dominated almost every point with his superior weight of shot. He set the tone with an immediate break. Draper served brilliantly, breezing through his service games, and overwhelmed his diminutive, underpowered opponent with his forehand aggression. For his part, Báez's performance reflected his struggles on the grass courts. He looked completely rushed for time against Draper's imperious shots. Centre Court (1.30pm BST start) A Sabalenka (1) v M Bouzkova (Cz) O Tarvet (GB) v C Alcaraz (Sp, 2) E Raducanu (GB) v M Vondrousova (Cz) No 1 Court (1pm BST start) C Norrie (GB) v F Tiafoe (US, 12) K Boulter (GB) v S Sierra (Arg) T Fritz (US, 5) v G Diallo (Can) Other courts to follow here After a heavy fall late in the first set, Báez eventually called for the physio while trailing by a break at 2-1 in the second set and he called out the physio again during the changeover after losing two further games. Across the net, Draper continued to pile on the pressure, rolling through to a two-set lead. After Draper sealed a break early in the third set, Báez finally opted to retire. Sign up to The Recap The best of our sports journalism from the past seven days and a heads-up on the weekend's action after newsletter promotion In the second round, Draper will face the 2017 finalist Marin Cilic after the 36-year-old eased through against Raphaël Collignon of Belgium with a 6-3, 6-4, 6-3 win. 'I feel like I haven't yet found [my top level] on the grass,' Draper said. 'I feel like it's coming, so I'm looking forward to that moment when it all sort of comes together and I can really show my best level. I think I've still got so much to unlock on the grass. I think that's really exciting for me. I love Wimbledon. I think if there's any tournament I want to play my best in, any tournament that I want to win, it's this one. I'm going to do everything in my power and everything in my control to get to that point.' During the match, there were a few amusing reminders that Draper and the Wimbledon public are still growing accustomed to each other. As the crowd was repeatedly caught out by the trajectory of his spectacular heavy topspin forehand, at one point the sound of a cork popping out of a champagne bottle echoed across the court, prompting Draper's head to spin round in search of the disturbance. This is a regular occurrence at Wimbledon, of course, but with every victory he will get a little more used to everything that comes with performing on the courts he has dreamed of competing on since he was a child.
The Guardian
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Jack Draper enters the Wimbledon meat grinder as Britain's Big Thing
As Jack Draper arched his back to serve, a set and a break up on Court No 1, a well-groomed man in thick silver sunglasses stood up in his seat and posed for a photo in front of the action, chewing theatrically on the handle of his lustrously finished handbag, thereby conveying to his social media feed that he was (a) present, vital, right here in the moment; and (b) not very interested in tennis. Nobody seemed to mind. In fairness Wimbledon's big Tuesday best-of-British event did feel a bit like this. Less an act of white-hot sporting drama, more just, like, a really cool thing happening. An hour and 13 minutes into this first-round match Sebastián Báez would retire with a knee injury at 6-2, 6-2, 2-1 down. There will be far tougher opponents than the world No 38 who barely left an imprint on the Wimbledon turf, and whose only obvious victory plan was to keep bunting the ball back until one of you dies of heat exhaustion. There was no chance of that on the Wimbledon grass. Instead this was the tennis equivalent of watching a man being run over by a truck, albeit a very elegant, high-end, luxury-spec truck. And so Draper has now progressed to the second round, and also taken a step along another significant pathway. For Draper this Wimbledon is a kind of coming out event, a society debut. Not in any sport-related sense. He's No 4 in the world. He has already vaulted through every level placed in front of him, from the nepo-baby jibes of the junior tennis circuit, a place that makes even the drowned world of kids cricket seem insufficiently neurotic, to proving himself as a genuine elite presence on tour. But this is also Draper's first post-Murray summer, his first as the Big Thing, the key domestic TV event at this arena of swoons, flushes and also hunger. It would emerge later that the handbag-biting man was in fact part of a team of influencers sent by Draper's fashion sponsor to create their own sub-spectacle, amplify the brand, influence. The All England Club can hardly complain. Wimbledon and Draper is also essentially a brand partnership. British star power has been vital to this place's transformation into a hugely potent financial engine, spawned out of the appearance of sporting mania as a feature in public life in the mid-90s. Wimbledon entwined itself around this, the corporate hospitality dollar, the pink trouser pound. The industry is real. It needs meat. So Draper must head into the grinder, a deeply mannered kind of grinder, but a grinder nonetheless. Court No 1 was viciously hot and humid in late afternoon, the kind of heat that sits on every surface like heavy gravity. There was a slow wave of whoops and whistles as the players walked out, Draper picturesquely vast next to Báez. There are still questions to be answered here. What are the shapes, the sounds, the iconography of the Draper fandom? Henman Energy was fevered and oddly sexless, with a vague sense of cheering for a minor royal cousin. The Murray years were more nuanced, a deeper bond, a higher ceiling, a sense of greatness to be touched. Draper is something else, a product off the high-end factory line, a machine made to hit and stretch and win. You can see why elite players consider him elite. There are no weaknesses in his physical toolbox. Tall but good feet. Power but still whippy and light in his shoulders. And yes we will objectify him, because this is tennis, a relentless elite sport, but also basically a country-house flirtation that got out of hand. The jaw, the shoulders, the sculpted lines. This thing is rangy, classical, elite-athlete handsome. We have one of these now. How is it going to feel? 'Come on Drapes' lone voices shouted in the crowd, trying it out, as he hit long in the opening game, searching for timing in that full-rotation forehand. But with 20 minutes gone it was already 5-1. The second set was if anything even easier. And outside on the big-screen slope beyond Court No 1 the vibe was equally comfortable. There are issues to be settled here. What will we call this space now, given it seems to need to be called something? Henman Hill always sounded like a bottle of bad English wine. Does it have to be a hill? Jackatoa? The Jackerhorn? Jackstock? Is there a Jackstonbury angle? All of this fluff has a hard commercial edge. Sport must be sold to people who don't like sport. Eyeballs must be harvested. But it is a shame, because Draper is interesting in his own right. He has taken time to find his best self, struggled with nerves, and spoken recently about the influence of his breathing coach, which is very Big Sport kind of thing, a place where often the real interest is the challenge of simply surviving in this world, existing on that lighted stage. Draper has spent a lot of time working out how to be alone, waiting better, being in hotels better, remembering to breathe, learning to win, as here, without taking a bite out of himself. On this evidence it might just be an unusually comfortable reboot.
The Guardian
01-07-2025
- Sport
- The Guardian
Jack Draper eases into Wimbledon second round after Sebastián Báez retirement
For three long weeks, as Wimbledon has gradually drawn closer, Jack Draper has had to navigate the growing anticipation within himself and from the world around him; he has had to field countless questions about his ability to handle the pressure and, in the quiet moments, he has surely wondered how he will deal with it all. Now, finally, he can simply focus on playing tennis. Draper took his first step forward at his home grand slam as one of the best players in the world by defeating the Argentinian Sebastián Báez with a dominant performance, establishing a 6-2, 6-2, 2-1 lead by the time his opponent retired. This occasion had been a long time coming. Over the past year, Draper has enjoyed an incredible, long-awaited breakthrough in the sport after struggling badly with injuries and physical issues during his first years on the tour. He is now the world No 4, a contender for every tournament he enters, a grand slam semi-finalist at the US Open and a Masters 1000 champion at Indian Wells. While most British players usually enjoy some of their first notable results at Wimbledon, an unusual part of Draper's rise is how all of his success has so far come elsewhere. Despite his significant capabilities on grass, Draper has already equalled his best career showing at Wimbledon with this victory. On Thursday, he will attempt to break new ground by passing the second round for the first time in his career. His ambitions, however, are far greater. At No 38, Báez is one of the highest-ranked opponents that a seeded player can face but specialises in grinding opponents down in bruising, attritional clay court battles. Not only is he uncomfortable on grass, a surface he has won just three matches on in his career, Báez is also in poor form and he arrived on No 1 court with a six-match losing streak. If Draper was feeling the nerves of this occasion, they did not last long. After spraying two forehands well long in the first few points of Báez's opening service game, by the end of the game the fourth seed had already found his range on his forehand and he dominated almost every point with his superior weight of shot. He set the tone with an immediate break. Draper served brilliantly, breezing through his service games, and overpowered the diminutive, underpowered 24-year-old with his forehand aggression. For his part, Báez's performance reflected his struggles on the grass courts. He looked completely rushed for time against Draper's imperious shot. Centre Court (1.30pm BST start) A Sabalenka (1) v M Bouzkova (Cz) O Tarvet (GB) v C Alcaraz (Sp, 2) E Raducanu (GB) v M Vondrousova (Cz) No 1 Court (1pm BST start) C Norrie (GB) v F Tiafoe (US, 12) K Boulter (GB) v S Sierra (Arg) T Fritz (US, 5) v G Diallo (Can) Other courts to follow here After taking a difficult fall late in the first set, Báez eventually called for the physio while trailing by a set and a break at 2-1 and he called out the physio again during the changeover after losing two further games. Across the net, Draper continued to pile pressure on the Argentine, rolling through to a two-set lead. After Draper sealed a break early in the third set, Báez finally opted to retire from the match. Sign up to The Recap The best of our sports journalism from the past seven days and a heads-up on the weekend's action after newsletter promotion As the match endured, there were a few amusing reminders that both Draper and the Wimbledon crowd are still growing accustomed to each other. In the opening game, the crowd groaned in anticipation of one of Draper's forehands flying out, only for the ball to dip as it neared the baseline, landing inside the court and forcing an error from his opponent. The extreme topspin Draper generates with his forehand is a staple of his game but it takes time to understand how his destructive forehand curls into the court, inflicting maximum damage. A few games later, the sound of a cork popping champagne bottle echoed across No 1, prompting Draper's head to spin round in search of the disturbance. This is a regular occurrence at Wimbledon, of course, but with every victory he will get a little more used to everything that comes with performing on the courts he has dreamed of competing on since he was a child.
