The left-hander has struggled with injuries to his arm, knee and shoulder and has played just 12 matches in the past year.<\/p>\n
Those injury problems began at Wimbledon last year, when he was having the best run of his career after reaching the 2024 US Open semi-finals and rising to a career-high fourth in the world rankings.<\/p>\n
But, after making his comeback on the south coast, Draper said he was in a “very stable place” with his injuries, which included bone bruising in his serving arm.<\/p>\n
“Knee tendonitis doesn’t go away overnight, but I’m in a really good position to be very explosive,” he told BBC Sport.<\/p>\n
“I feel like I’ve got full power and full capacity back again which is a massive feeling for me after not having that for a very long time.”<\/p>\n
And Draper is glad to have Murray in his corner after an “incredibly difficult” year.<\/p>\n
“Andy, truthfully, is one of my biggest inspirations. When I was younger I remember him playing all the big events and being there to watch him,” Draper said.<\/p>\n
“He believes in my game, he believes in me as a person. That’s what I really need right now coming back from the year I have had.”<\/p>\n
Fellow Briton Pinnington Jones came from a set down to defeat Argentina’s Marco Trungelliti earlier on Monday.<\/p>\n
In the women’s competition, Britain’s Francesca Jones was brushed aside 6-2 6-2 by former French Open champion Jelena Ostapenko.<\/p>\n
Teenager Hannah Klugman suffered a narrow 7-5 5-7 7-5 defeat by Czech 19-year-old Tereza Valentova.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The left-hander has struggled with injuries to his arm, knee and shoulder and has played just 12 matches…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":513017,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-513016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=513016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513016\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/513017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=513016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=513016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=513016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}