Jack Draper has pulled out of the US Open men’s singles with an arm injury.
The British fifth seed, who had been scheduled to face Belgium’s Zizou Bergs in the second round, now faces another period on the sidelines after missing the recent Masters 1000 tournaments in Toronto and Cincinnati as he attempted to recover from a bruised bone in his upper left arm.
The injury, which Draper attempted to play down earlier this week, leaves him unable to defend the bulk of the 800 points he earned after reaching the semi-finals last year. He is projected to drop at least two places in the rankings to seventh as a result.
“Hi guys, I’m sorry to say I’ll be withdrawing from the US Open,” Draper announced on social media. “I tried my very best to be here and give myself every chance to play, but the discomfort in my arm has become too much and I have to do what is right and look after myself. Thank you for all the support.”
The irony is that Draper had appeared to be in particularly fine fettle after emerging from a seven-week hiatus last week to compete in the re-imagined mixed doubles event alongside Jessica Pegula. Always an imposing presence at 6ft 4in, he looked noticeably more muscular, a change he attributed to tennis-specific fitness work during his injury absence rather than a dedicated effort to bulk up with bench presses and the like.
Before his return at Flushing Meadows, where his mixed doubles run with Pegula culminated with a semi-final defeat to Casper Ruud and Iga Swiatek, Draper was last seen in competitive action at Wimbledon, where he was seeded fourth but was beaten in round two by former finalist Marin CIlic. By then, he had already been suffering with pain in his humerus, the bone that runs from the shoulder to the elbow, for several weeks.
“It was something I was playing through for a while,” Draper said after his win over Gomez on Monday. “I first started feeling it probably towards the middle of the clay season. I felt like my arm was shutting down a little bit when I was hitting forehands and on the serve. It kind of got progressively worse. Then, on the grass, it got quite painful. So I didn’t know what I was dealing with.
“After the grass, I got it checked out. I had some bone stress, bone bruising, in my humerus on my left side. It is one of those where, if you keep playing with it, it could become very, very serious. So I had to take some time out. Saying that, it was not so bad, because I could obviously do a lot of other things as well physically. It wasn’t like I had to stop completely.”
That situation has now changed, with a longer layoff seemingly required to solve the issue. Draper, who practised at Flushing Meadows on Tuesday and Wednesday before confirming his withdrawal, had been seeded to meet Jannik Sinner, the Italian world No 1, in the quarter-finals.