Jack Draper enjoyed a winning return to ATP Tour action as he beat Quentin Halys in straight sets at the Dubai Tennis Championships on Monday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Draper came through 7-6 (10-8) 6-3 against his French opponent when making his first appearance on tour since last summer’s US Open, having been nursing a “bone bruising” injury in his left arm ever since a second-round defeat to Marin Cilic at Wimbledon.<\/p>\n
The Brit, sporting a new shaved head look, had returned to the court earlier this month when he beat Viktor Durasovic 6-2 6-2 in a Davis Cup tie against Norway.<\/p>\n
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This content is provided by Twitter, which may be using cookies and other technologies. Unfortunately we have been unable to verify if you have consented to Twitter cookies. Enable Cookies<\/a> “It feels so good, honestly to be out here, competing in front of people,” Draper said after beating Halys.<\/p>\n “I had a tough opponent here today, he was tricky, he served great and it could have been a bit cleaner from my side, but I haven’t played in a long time on the tour so I’m really proud of the way I came out today – hopefully I can keep going strength to strength.<\/p>\n “I suppose I’ve been craving the feeling of competing for a very long time. It felt normal, it felt like I was coming back to doing what I love, which is competing, having the adrenaline of winning and losing points.<\/p>\n “A lot of people have helped me get back to this position after a lot of down moments in the last eight months, it hasn’t been easy to get back here, it’s something I can be really proud of and long may it continue.”<\/p>\n Twitter<\/p>\n This content is provided by Twitter, which may be using cookies and other technologies. Unfortunately we have been unable to verify if you have consented to Twitter cookies. Enable Cookies<\/a> Draper posted a first serve win percentage of 86 per cent, with 13 aces, but converted just one of five break point opportunities.<\/p>\n He will now face the winner of Fabian Marozsan and Arthur Rinderknech’s match in the next round.<\/p>\n A tightly-fought opening set saw Draper hit nine aces on his way to a tiebreak, where he saved three set points before clinching it in one hour and six minutes.<\/p>\n Halys stayed with him early in the second set too, before Draper converted a pivotal break point in the fourth game to take control of the match.<\/p>\n Watch the ATP and WTA Tours, live on Sky Sports or stream with NOW<\/a> and the Sky Sports app<\/a>, giving Sky Sports customers access to over 50 per cent more live sport this year at no extra cost. Find out more here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jack Draper enjoyed a winning return to ATP Tour action as he beat Quentin Halys in straight sets…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":495488,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-495487","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\/495487","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=495487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495487\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/495488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=495487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=495487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=495487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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