Jack Draper won the biggest title of his tennis career at the 2024 Vienna Open and it came after a week of stellar tennis.
The British player tasted success on the ATP Tour this year. He won the title in Stuttgart, which was his maiden Tour-level win. He wanted to follow up on that success also during the hard-court part of the season, and he certainly did, reaching the US Open semi-final.
During his subsequent tournament, however, Draper got injured. He competed at the Japan Open in Tokyo when he couldn't finish his quarter-final match against Ugo Humbert.
That injury then also stopped him from competing at the Shanghai Masters. It seemed like the 22-year-old's season could be over sooner than he wanted, but Draper was able to return to the tennis courts.
He did that at the 2024 Vienna Open, which is an ATP 500 tournament leading up to the last ATP Masters 1000 event of the year, the Paris Masters.
In the first round, he had to play against former World No. 4 Kei Nishikori, but Draper was able to win the match in two sets. He won in two sets also against Luciano Darderi, but his quarter-final opponent, Tomas Machac, pushed him to three sets.
Still, the Brit won, and he also won in his semi-final match against Lorenzo Musetti to set up the final clash with Karen Khachanov. The Russian player was on an eight-match winning streak coming into the match, having won a title in Almaty the previous week.
It seemed like he found his best tennis again, which wins against the likes of Matteo Berrettini and Alex de Minaur certainly proved. However, there could be only one winner, and it was the one that was the better player in the final.
Draper broke his opponent's serve already in the third game, leading 2-1, but he couldn't use two more chances to go into a two-break lead two games later.
That, however, didn't change the outcome of the opening set, as Draper blasted six aces while hitting his first serve 79% of the time and winning 95% of the rallies after his first serve. All of that secured him a simple 6-4 first-set win.
Inspired by the performance from the first set, Draper had an insane start into the second set. He won 17 of the first 19 rallies, and very quickly, he found himself 4-0 up.
That looked like a lead that Khachanov could never come back from, especially since his opponent was serving really well. However, the Russian did.
He erased the two-break deficit. After nine games of play, Khachanov led 5-4, and he was even two points away from winning the second set, leading 30-15 on Draper's serve in the tenth game.
Draper, however, managed to recover from losing the massive lead, winning the last three games of the match to win it 6-4, 7-5. After the last rally was played, he fell to the ground, celebrating the biggest title of his tennis career.
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