In his opening match, Draper had enough quality to see off Halys. He did not possess quite enough sharpness against Rinderknech.<\/p>\n
Draper was again wearing a compression sleeve on the affected left arm, although a string of winners from his dominant side – including an eye-catching 100mph forehand which whipped past Rinderknech – showed he was not afraid of holding back.<\/p>\n
The Briton has also switched to a platform serve, meaning he stands with his feet slightly wider to allow a smoother transfer of weight, in an attempt to alleviate pressure on the bothersome bruised humerus.<\/p>\n
That illustrates how Draper knows he needs to continue managing the issue.<\/p>\n
Draper will be pleased how he pushed a tuned-up Rinderknech until the very end, even though he was unable to create opportunities on his opponent’s rock-solid service game.<\/p>\n
Rinderknech’s variation and precision on a quick surface was hard to cope with. But Draper’s lack of recent court time also showed in some rusty returning as the match reached its critical stage.<\/p>\n
Once the feeling of frustration which inevitably follows any defeat subsides, Draper will reflect positively on the strides he has made in Dubai – assuming he recovers without any major issues.<\/p>\n
Next he heads to Indian Wells – to defend the biggest title of his career – with valuable court time in the bank and the first step of a comeback likely to require patience completed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In his opening match, Draper had enough quality to see off Halys. He did not possess quite enough…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":788966,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5018,3,4],"tags":[748,393,4884,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-788965","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"category-uk","9":"category-united-kingdom","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-northern-ireland","14":"tag-scotland","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116133723215424575","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=788965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788965\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/788966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=788965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=788965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=788965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}