The post-victory celebration might have been reserved – a solemn face only briefly breaking into half a smile – but Draper will be delighted with his ATP Tour return, make no mistake.<\/p>\n
An absence of nearly six months has undoubtedly been difficult for Draper to deal with.<\/p>\n
Pulling out of January’s Australian Open showed the severity of the bruised humerus on his dominant left arm – the bone running from the shoulder to the elbow – and the necessity to avoid any risks.<\/p>\n
So too did the decision to withdraw from the ATP tournament in Rotterdam earlier this month.<\/p>\n
Some saw that move, coming after making his comeback with a routine Davis Cup win, as a red flag.<\/p>\n
For Draper, though, it was all about playing the long game with a career which has been characterised by injury.<\/p>\n
But there was no holding back against Halys. A pair of flaying forehands in the first two points of the match set the tone, followed by a booming ace at the start of an opening service game where he found his range with four out of five first serves.<\/p>\n
Draper was wearing a protective compression sleeve on the affected arm, but he continued to play freely and fluently from the baseline.<\/p>\n
It has been clear for a while there is not a straightforward fix with an injury of this nature.<\/p>\n
Generally speaking, the fear with a bruised humerus is the problem could lead to a more serious stress fracture with continued repetition and torsional stress – which tennis players clearly face.<\/p>\n
Patience has become a virtue which Draper has needed to learn – and, while this was an impressive return, he may still need more of it in the weeks and months ahead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The post-victory celebration might have been reserved – a solemn face only briefly breaking into half a smile…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":486540,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":["post-486539","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\/486539","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=486539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/486540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=486539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=486539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=486539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}