Jack Draper has been one of the stories from the first week of the Australian Open after winning three consecutive five set matches.
Draper had spent over 12 hours on court after coming from behind to win all of his first three matches at the Australian Open.
This included two wins over Australian players, with Draper even being booed against Thanasi Kokkinakis in the second round.
Despite the fans not necessarily approving of his comeback, Draper was congratulated by Kokkinakis after the match in a social media exchange.
The Australian Open is the first tournament of the Brit’s 2025 season, with Draper previously struggling with a hip injury and withdrawing from the United Cup.
Draper had admitted he wasn’t feeling great ahead of his fourth round match with Carlos Alcaraz, and that thought became a reality in their third round match in Melbourne.
Jack Draper explains what caused him to retire at the Australian Open
After going two sets to love down against Alcaraz on Rod Laver Arena, Draper elected to retire and has since cited tendinitis in his hip.
Draper continued to be asked about this injury in his post-match press conference, with the 23-year-old putting his pain down to the amount of time he has spent on court in Melbourne.
“I mean, it’s not really about the timeout, like it’s about, you know, there is such short windows in tennis to get your body right,” said Draper. “You know, you don’t want to just sort of spike your load so much, and that’s kind of what I have done here, and that’s why I got injured. All tennis injuries or most injuries in sport, unless it’s a freak accident, is all load management.
“If you do too much too soon, if I went and hit a thousand serves tomorrow, I’d probably have an ab strain because I have done so much in one day. Everything is load management.
“Obviously here I have come and I played a ridiculous amount of tennis and I have broken down. The key to stay injury-free and being consistent is, yeah, having that consistency in your body time where you’re injury-free, time to train, time to get your body right. If you’re dealing with injuries and playing through pain and taking painkillers and doing all that, then it’s not ideal.
“Obviously you’re always going to have stress through your body and stuff, but it’s important for me to obviously just get my training load back up again, get this tendinitis or whatever I have going on sorted, so I can be consistent with everything that I’m doing again.”
Where is Jack Draper playing next?
With Draper out of the Australian Open after achieving his best result in Melbourne, attention now turns to recovering ahead of his next tournament.
Prior to even playing the first Grand Slam of the year, Draper had decided not to play in the Davis Cup Qualifiers that feature Novak Djokovic and Nick Kyrgios.
Instead Draper will return to Europe to play the ATP 500 indoor hard court tournament in Rotterdam for the first time.
This tournament will feature a stacked lineup including six top 10 players, with Rotterdam recruiting Carlos Alcaraz for the first time.
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