This time, though, Draper made it on to court, appearing initially nervous – but without the compression sleeve that supported him through recent appearances. <\/p>\n
He was smiling by the third game, when he read a tricky Atmane serve well and pulled off an unlikely winner to delight the crowd and level the score to deuce.<\/p>\n
Having failed to break Atmane as the Frenchman won the first set 6-3, Draper began to show glimpses of the glittering 2025 form which earned his number four ranking last June.<\/p>\n
In the second set, the Montreal crowd whooped as Draper executed a powerful cross-court forehand on course to a dominant 6-2 set win. <\/p>\n
He looked primed for a comeback victory but a different, depleted Draper returned for the third set, surrendering the opening game having led 40-15. <\/p>\n
The 2024 US Open semi-finalist appeared frustrated in the fourth game when he passed up a gift of a break point, firing a tired forehand into the net.<\/p>\n
After he was broken for 4-1 in the next, Draper sat down during a change of ends and was overcome with emotion, wiping tears from his eyes. <\/p>\n
Atmane served out to claim the match and will face Russian Karen Khachanov in the second round.<\/p>\n
Draper has a wildcard entry to the Cincinnati Open, which starts next week, but the incident puts his involvement in doubt, and that of the US Open which begins on 23 August.<\/p>\n
Earlier, British number five Jacob Fearnley beat France’s Adrian Mannarino 7-6 6-4 to set up a second-round tie against the Czech Republic’s Jakub Mensik.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This time, though, Draper made it on to court, appearing initially nervous – but without the compression sleeve…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":843845,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-843844","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\/843844","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=843844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843844\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/843845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=843844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=843844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=843844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}