Jack Draper says he is “winning by being here” as he made an emphatic return after a lengthy injury lay-off to help Great Britain take control of their Davis Cup qualifying tie against Norway.<\/p>\n
British number one Draper has spent five months on the sidelines with a bruised bone in his service arm.<\/p>\n
His comeback was delayed twice by the injury and he missed January’s Australian Open to complete his recovery.<\/p>\n
However, he served well, moved sharply and showed some brutal ball-striking to bear Viktor Durasovic 6-2 6-2 in his first competitive match for 164 days.<\/p>\n
Sterner tests will await world number 13 Draper, who is ranked 300 places above Durasovic, but he will be relieved to have rattled through a convincing win after a long spell out.<\/p>\n
“Tennis is a bubble, and sometimes you can get distracted that it’s all that matters in life,” the 24-year-old told BBC tennis correspondent Russell Fuller.<\/p>\n
“When you have time out, I used it wisely I think to try and make sure that when I try and come back to tennis, that I’m ready to go all the way again.”<\/p>\n
“I’m confident that I’m on a really good path. I’m winning by being here.”<\/p>\n
Cameron Norrie then gave Britain a 2-0 lead with a characteristically gritty 6-4 6-4 win over teenager Nicolai Budkov Kjaer.<\/p>\n
Lloyd Glasspool and Julian Cash can wrap up the best-of-five tie for Britain at the earliest opportunity if they triumph in Friday’s doubles.<\/p>\n
If not, Draper and Norrie will have to take to the court again for the reverse singles.<\/p>\n
The winner of the tie in Oslo will face either Australia or Ecuador for a place in November’s eight-team Finals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jack Draper says he is “winning by being here” as he made an emphatic return after a lengthy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":457147,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-457146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=457146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457146\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/457147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=457146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=457146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=457146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}