British rising star Jack Draper hasn't played since May, but the Brit made a winning return at the Winnipeg Challenger event.
Jack Draper established himself as one of the better young players on the ATP Tour last year but is struggling to replicate those results this year. The Brit has been relatively strong when he did play, but his body betrayed him more than once this year.
Before this match, Draper totalled only 17 matches, scoring ten victories. The last match he played before his long injury pause was on May 29th against Tomas Etcheverry at Roland Garros. It was the breakout event for Etcheverry, who went to the quarter-final losing to Zverev, but for Draper, it marked the start of rehab.
He rehabbed several times already that year but this was shaping up to be the most significant injury pause of the year. Speaking after the match in Paris, Draper admitted to being mentally destroyed but he put in the work, and now he's back.
Interestingly, Draper opted not to try to qualify for the Canadian Open or the Cincinnati Masters opting to play the Winnipeg challenger instead. The reason was likely to slowly ramp up against "lesser" opposition ahead of the US Open.
Draper performed great at the event last year, beating two excellent players, Emil Ruuusuvuori and Felix Auger-Aliassime, eventually losing to Karen Khachanov, who went to the semi-final. The return in Canada saw him take on Rio Noguchi, and world number 123 had no problems winning the match.
While his ranking is outside of the Top 100, Draper is realistically a Top 20 player at his best and swiftly overpowered his opponent. He took 72 minutes to win 6-2 6-2 hitting five aces and losing only 4 points behind his first serve. Next up is Thai-Son Kwiatkowski.
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