With the prestigious Sunshine Double looming large, few players on tour have a more critical next few months than British No 1. Jack Draper.
Draper pulled out of the US Open last year after winning his first round match, and extended that layoff into 2026, which saw him miss the first grand slam of the year to allow his bruised bone injury to recover sufficiently.
His comeback to the main tour was further delayed when he withdrew from Rotterdam in early February. This came after his return to competitive tennis in the Davis Cup, where he featured for Great Britain and defeated Norway’s Viktor Durasovic in straight sets.
The 24-year-old did not appear to be in any discomfort during his Davis Cup match but withdrew from Rotterdam citing that he had been advised against competing in back-to-back matches so soon.
Draper finally made his return to the main tour last week, in Dubai. Entering as the No. 4 seed, he drew qualifier Quentin Halys in the first round, and fought through a well-contested encounter to win: 7-6(8), 6-3 after 1 hour and 39 minutes.
Speaking after the match, Draper said: “It feels so good. To be out here, to be competing in front of people.”
“I suppose I’ve been craving the feeling of competing for a very long time. I think it just felt normal. It felt like I was coming back to doing what I love, which is being out here, competing, and having that adrenaline of winning and losing points…”.
He was back on court 48 hours later against another Frenchman – Arthur Rinderknech. A different type of challenge, and one which ultimately proved too much so soon for Draper, as he was defeated: 5-7, 7-6(4), 4-6 in a battle which lasted two and a half hours.
The match was to a decent standard overall, and serve-dominated as the French No. 1 held serve for all 18 of his service games, saving two break-points along the way.
Draper is a player possessing a deadly serve himself, but he was unable to match Rinderknech’s 20 aces, 71% first-serve percentage and 84% of points won on first-serve (65/77) during this occasion.
Given the context, the two matches allowed Draper to leave Dubai with positives – the glaringly obvious one being that he avoided physical struggles after five competitive sets.
The arrival of March sees the first Masters 1000 event of the year, followed immediately by the second, in a double-header referred to as the Sunshine Double – Indian Wells followed by Miami.
It was last year that Jack Draper really put his name in the mix with the big boys as he became the first British man to win a Masters 1000 event since Cameron Norrie in October 2021 (Also Indian Wells).
That also means he has to defend those 1,000 points this year. With his current total post-Dubai sitting at 2,510, that’s a highly significant amount of points to defend. Draper also reached the final of the Madrid Masters 1000 in late April, which rewarded him with an additional 650 points.
For context, Draper has 1,760 points to defend from tournaments until the end of April. Failure to defend any of those points would leave him with just 750 points which would see his ranking drop him down to the 70s.
Of course, the 24-year-old will be hopeful and fully confident that the next two months will not pan out like this, but it highlights the magnitude of the next few tournaments for Draper. Almost all of his points come before Wimbledon.
The flip side is that Wimbledon and then onwards presents a huge opportunity. Draper arrived at Wimbledon with increased national expectations after his superb run of results had seen him climb to No. 4 in the world.
He entered the tournament as the No. 4 seed, but disappointingly crashed out in the second round to 36-year-old Marin Cilic in four sets.
Speaking seven weeks later, ahead of his short-lived US Open campaign, Draper confirmed when he had first felt discomfort in his arm: “It [injury] was something I was playing through for a while, I’d first started feeling it towards, well, the middle of the clay season. It felt like my arm was shutting down a little bit when I was hitting forehands and on the serve as well.”
In that same interview, he clears up that the injury was not responsible for his grass exits at Queen’s and Wimbledon, stating that he “didn’t adapt well enough” and was “beaten by the better player” at Wimbledon.
Despite the huge points defence looming, the 24-year-old’s main concern will be staying fit and avoiding recurrence of the bone bruise injury to mount a surge back up the rankings throughout 2026.
After all, he proved last season that he is capable of competing with and beating the very best.
That’s a level he’ll hope to find this week at Indian Wells as he finds himself in the same quarter of the tournament bracket as five-time winner, Novak Djokovic.
A potential fourth round meeting between the two would be a first since Wimbledon in 2021, when Draper was 19 years old.
Djokovic won their only meeting in four sets on his way to claiming his sixth Wimbledon title.
Although it must be said, 2026 presents a very different Jack Draper to the teenager awarded a wildcard in 2021. Novak Djokovic in turn, continues to amaze the world with his performance level and physicality at 38 years old.
Next week may showcase a battle between the two at the highest level for the last time.
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