Jack Draper vowed to work his way out of his injury woes after being forced to retire with a right \u200bleg problem midway through his first-round match against Tomas \u200cEtcheverry at the Barcelona Open on Monday.<\/p>\n
The 24-year-old Briton, who returned to action in February after six months out due to a niggling left arm \u200binjury, pulled up while trailing 1-4 in the deciding \u200bset of his meeting with Argentine Etcheverry to cast doubts \u2060on his fitness for the clay season.<\/p>\n
\u201cSad to retire in \u200bBarcelona. I\u2019ve tried hard these last months to stay positive and \u200bgive my all,\u201d Draper, who tried to soldier on with taping below his right knee, said in a post on social media.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt will take time, \u200bbut I will work my way out of this. Thank you \u200bfor all the support throughout this process.\u201d<\/p>\n
After an early exit in Dubai in \u200cFebruary, \u2060Draper shook off the cobwebs to beat 24-times Grand Slam champion Novak Djokovic at Indian Wells, but his title defence in the Californian desert ended in the quarter-finals against Daniil Medvedev.<\/p>\n
The left-hander \u200bthen suffered another \u200bearly defeat in \u2060Miami and pulled out of Monte Carlo to protect his arm, but hoped to kick-start his \u200bcampaign in Barcelona ahead of the French Open that \u200bwill \u2060begin on May 24.<\/p>\n
\u201cI like how he plays, he\u2019s a great fighter,\u201d Etcheverry said of the former world number four, who has now \u2060slipped \u200bto 28th in the rankings.<\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully, he can \u200brecover as soon as he can to get back on tour, because the tour \u200blikes him.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u2014Reyters\u2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":16364,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-31835","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"The left-hander \u200bthen suffered another \u200bearly defeat in \u2060Miami and pulled out of Monte Carlo to protect his arm","published_date":"","news_description":"The left-hander \u200bthen suffered another \u200bearly defeat in \u2060Miami and pulled out of Monte Carlo to protect his arm","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/31835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/31835\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31837,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/31835\/revisions\/31837"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=31835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}