NICKI Draper, the mother of Wimbledon boys’ runner-up Jack, was glowing with praise after seeing her son push world number one Tseng Chung-hsin all the way before losing 6-1, 6-7 (2-7), 6-4 in the final.

Draper, 16, came into the event ranked 42nd in the world and utilised his powerful forehand against the Taiwanese star, who had already won the French Open boys’ title this season.

But the solid Tseng profited from 42 unforced errors to seal his second consecutive boys’ Grand Slam.

Speaking to Echosport, Nicki, who was educated in Dorchester from primary to A-level standard, felt Jack had performed “amazingly well”.

She said: “Jack was playing in a pre-Wimbledon tournament where all the top players come a week early to get used to the grass.

“He reached the semis of that tournament and I’ve been trying to watch him and work at the same time. He’s done amazingly well to stay to the end of the tournament, which is a real achievement, he puts in a lot of hard work.”

Nicki hailed Jack, who lost 6-4, 6-4 in the first qualifying round proper at Wimbledon to world number 168 Mohamed Safwat, for his impressive handling of the big occasion on Court One, where an estimated crowd of up to 10,000 were watching.

She said: “He’s always been a bit

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of a character, he likes to be different whether it’s his hair or his chains. He’s very much his own person.

“He’s never played in front of so many people, only a handful – a few hundred, not nine or 10 thousand.

“He gets the crowd pumped and showed that it meant a lot if he made a big shot. In tennis people are used to seeing a lot of characters, but it’s pretty strict out there on court, and quite rightly.

“In terms of his behaviour he did amazingly well.”

Jack’s next target will be to qualify for a men’s futures event in Morocco, held on a clay surface.

Nicki said: “He’s got a week off, trying to recover a bit. Then he’s going to be moving back to clay and hoping to get into the men’s futures event in Morocco – a very different environment to Wimbledon.

“It will be one man and his dog watching and he’ll have to graft away at the bottom of the men’s game. He has to pick up ATP points to get into men’s tournaments.

“He played (Safwat) and lost 6-4 6-4 but he felt he could’ve won the match and feels he’s at the right level to take on older and stronger people. He feels he’s ready, so we’ll see how it goes.”

Surrey-born Draper’s mother has strong connections to Dorset having attended Castlefield school for girls, now known as Thomas Hardye School in Dorchester.

Nicki moved to Dorchester aged eight, enrolling at St Osmund’s before completing her A-levels, joining Loughborough University and going on to take her first job in Portsmouth.

She said: “We used to visit my Mum and Dad and went to Weymouth, to go on the Helter Skelter, the amusements and fishing at the pier.”