Draper says injury-hit year left confidence below the floor, reaches Eastbourne quarters

Jack Draper moved into the Eastbourne quarter-finals with a 7-5, 6-4 win over Jack Pinnington Jones, but the result mattered as much for what it revealed about Draper’s state of mind as for the scoreline. The 24-year-old said his confidence had been “below the floor” only a couple of weeks earlier, a reflection of how far his game and his belief had been set back by an injury-riddled year.

Draper’s return to the Lexus Eastbourne Open has come after he was sidelined since April with a knee injury, making this only his second match in more than two months. He had already beaten lucky loser Marcos Giron 6-4, 7-6 (5) in the first round, his first ATP Tour match since April, and the pair of straight-sets victories gave him back-to-back tour-level wins for the first time since March. The win over Pinnington Jones sent him into his 23rd career ATP quarter-final and his fifth on British soil.

The deeper story is Draper’s recovery, not just his scoreline. He said he had not played Queen’s because he was not ready, and the grass-court swing has become a test of whether his body can keep pace with the ambitions that took him to a career-high world No. 4. After missing almost seven months with bone bruising in his serving arm before returning in February, Draper then lost another block of time with the knee problem in Barcelona in early April. Those interruptions left him with only 11 matches in the past year and caused his ranking to slide to No. 113, even after his run to the BNP Paribas Open title in Indian Wells and the US Open semi-finals in 2024.

Andy Murray is guiding Draper through the grass-court season, and Murray watched from the player box in Eastbourne as Draper worked through another tense afternoon in heat warnings and around 30C conditions. Draper has called Murray one of his biggest inspirations and values his belief in both his game and his character. That combination of support and match practice now carries added weight with Wimbledon approaching, because the question around Draper is no longer whether he can hit top level tennis, but whether he can keep stacking healthy days together.

Eastbourne has been a useful checkpoint. Draper reached the semi-finals on debut in 2022, and he will now meet Canada’s Gabriel Diallo in Thursday’s quarter-finals. If he keeps holding up physically, his game is starting to look like the kind that can travel to a bigger stage.