{"id":451116,"date":"2026-02-05T20:05:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T20:05:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/451116\/"},"modified":"2026-02-05T20:05:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T20:05:07","slug":"davis-cup-jack-draper-beats-viktor-durasovic-to-give-great-britain-lead-over-norway-in-qualifying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/451116\/","title":{"rendered":"Davis Cup: Jack Draper beats Viktor Durasovic to give Great Britain lead over Norway in qualifying"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Jack Draper claimed an emphatic victory on his long-awaited return from injury to give Great Britain a 1-0 lead over Norway in Davis Cup qualifying.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">British number one Draper has spent five months on the sidelines with a bruised bone in his service arm.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">His comeback was delayed twice by the injury and he missed January&#8217;s Australian Open to complete his recovery.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">However, he served well, moved sharply and showed some brutal ball-striking to bear Viktor Durasovic 6-2 6-2 in his first competitive match for 164 days.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Sterner tests will await world number 13 Draper, who is ranked 300 places above Durasovic, but he will be relieved to have rattled through a convincing win after a long spell out.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It&#8217;s been a difficult time but I knew I had to keep on practising and keep learning about myself,&#8221; the 24-year-old said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Cameron Norrie will face Nicolai Budkov Kjaer later on Thursday in the best-of-five tie.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Lloyd Glasspool and Julian Cash will team up for the doubles on Friday, with two singles matches to follow if the tie has not been decided by then.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The winner of the tie in Oslo will face either Australia or Ecuador for a place in November&#8217;s eight-team Finals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jack Draper claimed an emphatic victory on his long-awaited return from injury to give Great Britain a 1-0&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":451117,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":["post-451116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=451116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451116\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/451117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=451116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=451116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=451116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}