Jack Draper believes he will not be held back by any physical pain as he faces the challenge of finding his form at the US Open after a seven-week injury hiatus.
Draper, the fifth seed in New York, has not competed in singles since a difficult loss to Marin Cilic in the second round of Wimbledon after learning that he had been suffering from bone bruising in his left arm.
“It was something I was playing through for a while,” said Draper, who plays qualifier Federico Agustin Gómez in the first round 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.”
Although he was in pain at times during the grass season, Draper does not believe the injury played any role in his Wimbledon loss, which he said was purely down to his struggles to adapt to the surface.
“It’s an injury which takes time to heal,” said Draper. “A bone can heal, but it might be giving me some discomfort, that’s for sure. It’s not something which I’m going to go out on Monday and feel like it’s holding me back at all. But at the same time, I have been looking after this for the last month or so, so I’m looking forward to just getting back to competing. I think that will take my mind off a lot of things. I don’t feel like I’ll be holding back at all.”
