What Andy Murray can teach Jack Draper about fickle British tennis fans

In tabloid parlance, Andy Murray has “broken his silence” since retiring from tennis.

Usually, that silence has lasted a whole two or three days but in this case – the odd social media contribution aside – it is not unreasonable to say that Murray has been silent for the last month since hanging up his racket.

His posts on X have betrayed that he had still been watching the tennis, and the progress of his protege Jack Draper through the US Open, and the current British No 1 could do worse than to listen carefully to the advice of the man who used to hold that title (among others).

“Tennis is a very lonely sport at times, and the more and more successful you get, the higher those expectations are in terms of how you’re going to perform,” Murray told the BBC’s Today programme on Monday.

“It was really hard for me at times: reaching the final of Wimbledon and being criticised for your work, or feeling like you’re not good enough.

“I was one of the best tennis players in the world and had been extremely successful, but at that moment, I felt like I was failing at something, which I think is wrong.”

At the beginning of his journey, Draper lacks much of the scar tissue that Murray developed in his early career, when he lost six grand slam semi-finals and four finals before “finally” winning one at the US Open in 2012.

Murray added: “I don’t know if that would be the case in every country, if they would always feel like that about players if they didn’t win major championships or grand slams, but certainly in the UK, I found that period of my career really difficult, and I became quite defensive, around the media and in public.

“It might not have been the case, [but] my perception was… I was feeling a lot like I was being attacked, even when I was doing really well, and that was pretty hard.”

Draper was playing his first major semi on Friday night, and in just his 10th grand slam, that is a serious achievement; it took the prodigious Murray 12 attempts to reach that stage. As such, the 22-year-old is still being introduced to the British public and is yet to find himself subject to the expectations of which Murray speaks.

They are there, internally – Draper has made no bones about his belief that he can be world No 1 – but he has also shown an impressively mature attitude in the wake of defeat. His run to the semi-finals in New York has pushed him to a career-high No 20 in the rankings.

“I remember 14 months ago I was sat on the couch at home watching the Wimbledon final and seeing my ranking drop outside top 100,” Draper wrote on Monday.

“Head was in the shed! Shows what consistent work and great people around you can do!! Hungry for more.”

That hunger and belief in the work he is doing will go far, but it will also be tested. Murray is not wrong when he points out that it is hard to be a success in British sport unless you are the very best in the world: the bar is always set very high.

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As soon as Wednesday, less than a week after the biggest moment of his life, Draper will be asked to lead the British Davis Cup team into the group stages on home soil in Manchester, where anything less than qualification for the knockout stages in November will be seen as a failure.

But Draper seems to relish that challenge, even if that is tinged with the naivety of not having been at the centre of a storm as yet.

“I just need to keep on learning, keep on growing, keep on having situations like today [against Sinner] where I came unstuck and [learn] how am I going to do it different next time,” Draper said after his defeat.

“That’s the biggest thing: I think it is, honestly, just a matter of time. It’s experiences, doing all the right things, it’s training consistently, and over time you just progress and you get stronger and you get better.

“Hopefully I’ll be in these situations more often and I’m able to come through them.”

He’s right that it will take time, and there will be bumps along the road. But with allies like Murray, Draper should at least know what is coming.