Jack Draper returned after the best part of a year out with injury on Thursday.\u00a0Matt McNulty\/Getty Images for ITF<\/p>\n
Jack Draper<\/a> made a successful comeback from injury with a comfortable Davis Cup victory over Norway’s Viktor Durasovic<\/a>.<\/p>\n The British No. 1 needed just 59 minutes to wrap up a 6-2, 6-2 win and give Great Britain a flying start in the first qualifying round.<\/p>\n Draper admitted he endured some “dark moments” during a seven-month period in which he played just one singles match due to “complex” bone bruising in his left arm.<\/p>\n The issue also forced Draper to miss last month’s Australian Open, but he finally shook off the rust in front of new coach Jamie Delgado<\/a> with a dominant display in Oslo.<\/p>\n Afterwards, he said: “It’s good to get a match under my belt and get a first point for Great Britain.<\/p>\n “It’s taken hard work and perseverance. It’s been a really difficult time since I’ve been away from the sport but I’ve done the hard work no one sees and when I come back hopefully I can play some proper tennis again.”<\/p>\n This was the perfect soft relaunch for Draper against a Norway team missing its top player, world No. 12 Casper Ruud<\/a>, an absence the equivalent of taking Erling Haaland out of the national football team.<\/p>\n Ruud’s understandable withdrawal — his wife gave birth to their first daughter a few days ago — was only announced 10 minutes before the draw ceremony on Wednesday, once the 2,000-seater Nadderud Arena had sold out.<\/p>\n – Australian Open: Which Brits played in the first Grand Slam of the year?<\/a><\/p>\n Nevertheless, there was still the chance for the Norwegian crowd to see the player who rose to four in the world last June and had looked among the most likely to challenge the Carlos Alcaraz<\/a>\/Jannik Sinner<\/a> duopoly, until his injury was diagnosed after Wimbledon.<\/p>\n Draper’s strengths, his potent lefty serve and powerful forehand, were compromised by the injury. But, albeit while wearing a protective sleeve, the 24-year-old appeared to be swinging freely here.<\/p>\n It was hard to gauge precisely what Draper’s level is against Durasovic, ranked a lowly 313. However, eight aces, just 10 points dropped on serve and a healthy smattering of forehand winners was certainly an encouraging start.<\/p>\n British number two Cameron Norrie<\/a>, fresh from his run to the third round in Melbourne, gave Great Britain a 2-0 lead with a 6-4, 6-4 win over Nicolai Budkov Kjaer<\/a> in the second singles rubber on Thursday evening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jack Draper returned after the best part of a year out with injury on Thursday.\u00a0Matt McNulty\/Getty Images for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":462079,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-462078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462078\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/462079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}