{"id":652111,"date":"2026-06-22T12:05:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T12:05:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/652111\/"},"modified":"2026-06-22T12:05:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T12:05:12","slug":"jack-draper-ready-to-kick-on-at-eastbourne-after-injury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/652111\/","title":{"rendered":"Jack Draper &#8216;ready to kick on&#8217; at Eastbourne after injury"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">British tennis player Jack Draper says he is feeling &#8220;better than ever&#8221; as he prepares to make his return to competitive tennis following a two-month injury lay off.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The 24-year-old is due to play at the Eastbourne Tennis Open on Monday, taking on fifth seed Brandon Nakashima in the first round.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Speaking to BBC South East, the Surrey-based player said: &#8220;Last time I played here in 2022 it was a good week, I broke the top 100 for the first time and beat some really good players.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;There&#8217;s been lots of ups and downs since then but I&#8217;m in a really good space now, ready to kick on. I&#8217;m looking forward to getting back on the court.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Eastbourne Open, which this year runs until Saturday, will see 2024 US Open runner-up Taylor Fritz and 2025 Australian Open winner Madison Keys competing.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The tournament brought about 46,000 visitors to the town in 2025, a local councillor told the BBC ahead of the tournament starting.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Despite the tournament being downgraded in 2025, it has still managed to attract international talent who use the event to prepare for Wimbledon, like Draper.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"British tennis player Jack Draper says he is feeling &#8220;better than ever&#8221; as he prepares to make his&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":652112,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-652111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=652111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652111\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/652112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=652111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=652111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=652111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}