Despite being newly demoted to British No 2, Jack Draper has drawn confidence from his Indian Wells run — which included the first win of his career over Novak Djokovic — and is aiming to carry that form into the Miami Open.
Still working his way back from injury, the 24-year-old says he knows he can compete with the best but needs to fine-tune his body and get more match time to fulfil his potential. Draper received a bye into the second round in Miami and will meet the winner of Reilly Opelka and Nuno Borges on March 20 or 21.
“It [Indian Wells record] does help me for sure,” Draper said. “When you’ve had a lot of injuries in the past you’re able to understand that if you put in good preparation when you’re injured that anything is possible and you can get back to playing at a really high level. I’ve always been pretty good like that even though it’s probably not the best thing to be, I don’t want to be injured but those matches have helped me understand how I need to keep on improving and growing.
“I think when you’ve been out injured for a while it’s no necessarily about the actual injury you had, it’s about getting your body to feeling robust enough. For instance, last week playing those intense matches, you have to back up those performances and against Daniil [Medvedev] I was completely gassed out of energy. If you want to win those big events you have to be able to back it up and keep going. That’s the physical aspect but for the tennis aspect the more matches you play, the more times you can get out there, and understand your game better, the more you are able to do good things.”
Draper’s defence of his Indian Wells title ended controversially to Medvedev less than 24 hours after a gruelling 4-6 6-4 7-6 (7-5) victory over Djokovic. Undeterred, the Briton is keen to chase a second Masters 1000 trophy, though a difficult draw awaits: he could meet sixth seed Taylor Fritz in round three, world No.12 Casper Ruud in round four, and potentially world No.1 Carlos Alcaraz in the quarter-finals.