{"id":93035,"date":"2025-08-26T03:10:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-26T03:10:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/93035\/"},"modified":"2025-08-26T03:10:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-26T03:10:07","slug":"us-open-2025-jack-draper-forced-to-work-hard-for-first-round-win-over-federico-gomez-as-brit-returns-with-rafael-nadal-sleeveless-look","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/93035\/","title":{"rendered":"US Open 2025: Jack Draper forced to work hard for first-round win over Federico Gomez as Brit returns with Rafael Nadal ‘sleeveless’ look"},"content":{"rendered":"

Britain’s Jack Draper <\/a>was given a tough test in the first round of the US Open<\/a>, before he beat Argentinian Federico Gomez 6-4 7-5 6-7(9) 6-2.<\/p>\n

And he admitted after the match that he had gone for the sleeveless look in New York to copy Rafael Nadal, now he is happier with his arms.<\/p>\n

It was Draper’s first match for nearly two months due to injury – he learned that he had been suffering from bone bruising in his left arm following Wimbledon – and he came through a stern examination.<\/p>\n

Asked on court if he was “absolutely going sleeveless”, Draper said: “I always grew up watching Rafa and I’ve always wanted to rock the sleeveless one day.<\/p>\n

“There was a time a couple of years ago where I didn’t have the arms for it, I looked terrible, but now it’s coming together.”<\/p>\n

Those comments tallied with what he said before the match about now having a “man’s body”.<\/p>\n

“I have worked incredibly hard to improve my physicality on the court,” he said.<\/p>\n

“I think part of it is my genetics and growing into a bit more of a man’s body. I think that took me a long time.”<\/p>\n

Draper made the first significant move in the match, producing some fine groundstrokes as he broke serve in the seventh game on the way to taking the opening set.<\/p>\n

Draper then broke the Gomez serve in the third game of the second set, sealing it with a smash. And he soon took the set, clinching it with a brilliant forehand winner.<\/p>\n

Any idea he would win the match soon after that were blown away.<\/p>\n

Gomez broke Draper’s serve at the start of the third set as he moved into a 3-0 lead. But the Briton broke back in the seventh game as the set went to a tie-break.<\/p>\n

Draper took control of it early, moving 3-0 ahead, but Gomez fought back, helped by one wondrous forehand winner down the line when he was on the stretch.<\/p>\n

Draper had a match point he could not convert and eventually Gomez, with some pure power hitting, won the set to keep himself alive in the match.<\/p>\n

But the underdog ran out of steam after that, and Draper soon claimed victory to reach round two.<\/p>\n

He said afterwards that he did not have “too much expectation” for this tournament given his time out of action.<\/p>\n

“I wasn’t too sure if I was going to make it here,” Draper said.<\/p>\n

“It wasn’t my finest performance but credit to my opponent, he played some outstanding tennis.<\/p>\n

“I look forward to hopefully improving and getting better as the tournament carries on.<\/p>\n

“I\u2019m not putting too much expectation on myself. I\u2019ve put in the work, if I can get that level back I\u2019m going to be tough to beat.”<\/p>\n

Watch and stream top tennis action live and on demand on TNT Sports and discovery+<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Britain’s Jack Draper was given a tough test in the first round of the US Open, before he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":93036,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[46235,7258,101,118,56,54,55,6545],"class_list":{"0":"post-93035","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-federico-gomez","9":"tag-jack-draper","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom","15":"tag-us-open"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93035","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=93035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93035\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}