Although he did have to retire in his fourth-round match against Spain’s Carlos Alcaraz, it was not seen as a major concern.<\/p>\n
A hip injury had disrupted his pre-season work and meant the lack of time on the court had simply caught up with him.<\/p>\n
Draper played a lot in the months which followed, winning the biggest title of his career at Indian Wells before strong runs in the clay and grass swings.<\/p>\n
The surprise second-round defeat by Croat veteran Marin Cilic at Wimbledon provided a reality check – and the catalyst for a spell off tour.<\/p>\n
With an arm injury continuing to bother him, Draper pulled out of ATP 1,000 events in Toronto and Cincinnati.<\/p>\n
But the bruised humerus did not stop him training – and staying home meant he was able to see his favourite band Oasis at Wembley.<\/p>\n
Now, having arrived in New York over a week ago, it is back to business as he tries to stop Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz cleaning up the major titles for the second straight season.<\/p>\n
“I don’t want to feel like we’re just letting them do it,” fifth seed Draper said.<\/p>\n
“I want to keep on going after them, keep on improving, and hopefully soon be competing with them.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Although he did have to retire in his fourth-round match against Spain’s Carlos Alcaraz, it was not seen…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":95777,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":{"0":"post-95776","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95776","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=95776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95776\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}