\n<\/p>\n
Britain’s Jack Draper had to retire in the third set of his first-round match against Tomas Martin Etcheverry at the Barcelona Open because of a knee injury.<\/b><\/p>\n
Draper, playing his first match of the clay-court season, won the first set against Argentina’s Etcheverry 6-3 but began to have difficulty with his movement and lost the second set 6-3.<\/p>\n
The 24-year-old received attention from a physio and had tape applied to an area below his right knee shortly before the deciding set started.<\/p>\n
Draper’s serve was broken twice by Etcheverry in the third set and, after struggling to get around the court, he conceded the contest at 4-1 down.<\/p>\n
Draper, ranked 28th in the world, has been cautious during a return from an arm injury and pulled out of the recent Monte Carlo Masters before the tournament.<\/p>\n
He was absent for six months because of a bruised bone in his left serving arm, before returning to competitive action in February.<\/p>\n
The Barcelona Open was Draper’s fourth event since he made his comeback.<\/p>\n
Etcheverry said Draper is a “great competitor” and is keen to see him back on court again in the near future.<\/p>\n
“I like how he plays. He’s a great fighter,” he said. “Hopefully he can recover as soon as he can to get back on tour because the tour likes him.”<\/p>\n
Cameron Norrie, who replaced Draper as British number one last month, faces Switzerland’s Stan Wawrinka in the first round later on Monday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Britain’s Jack Draper had to retire in the third set of his first-round match against Tomas Martin Etcheverry at the Barcelona Open because of a knee injury. Draper, playing his first match of the clay-court season, won the first set against Argentina’s Etcheverry 6-3 but began to have difficulty with his movement and lost the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12908,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12907\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}