Former British number one Draper has only played 15 matches in the past 12 months, largely because of the bruised humerus that has been bothering him for over a year.<\/p>\n
His initial comeback earlier this season was derailed by tendinitis in his knee and the 2024 US Open semi-finalist had not played for over two months before his return at Eastbourne last week.<\/p>\n
Missing a third successive Grand Slam tournament – particularly his home major – is a huge blow.<\/p>\n
The former world number four, who is now ranked 131st, has not played a major since the US Open in August.<\/p>\n
The arm problem first flared up during the 2025 clay-court season and he struggled with the issue at last year’s Wimbledon, where he lost to Croat veteran Marin Cilic in the second round.<\/p>\n
After winning one match at Flushing Meadows in New York, he decided he could not continue in the tournament and ultimately ended his season early.<\/p>\n
Draper made his return to the ATP Tour in February and reached the quarter-finals at Indian Wells in March, where he was the defending champion – and beat Novak Djokovic on the way.<\/p>\n
However, he retired from his only match of the clay swing in Barcelona in April.<\/p>\n
After skipping the rest of the clay season, Draper withdrew from Queen’s, saying his recovery was “going in the right direction” but he needed “one more week” before returning at Eastbourne.<\/p>\n
He practised at Wimbledon over the weekend but did not take to the court on Monday and withdrew shortly afterwards.<\/p>\n
“It is so frustrating when you think this time last year Draper was playing the best tennis of his life,” British former world number four Tim Henman said on BBC TV.<\/p>\n
“His body just hasn’t been able to stand up.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former British number one Draper has only played 15 matches in the past 12 months, largely because of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":733077,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":["post-733076","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\/733076","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=733076"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733076\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/733077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=733076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=733076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=733076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}