Jack Draper\u2019s ATP rank could drop by more than 100% should he fail to win his opening match at Indian Wells on Saturday.<\/p>\n
The British No.1 won this tournament last year but would go on to suffer an arm injury and opted to skip the Australian Open this year, meaning he is already at a rankings disadvantage going into the Californian tournament.<\/p>\n
His action so far this year came in a Davis Cup qualifier in which he beat World No.313 Viktor Durasovic but he suffered a disappointing tournament in Dubai, losing in the round of 16 of the ATP 500 event.<\/p>\n
This means he heads to Indian Wells as the 14th best male player in the world but should he lose his opening match against World No.93 Roberto Bautista Agut, he will lose 990 ranking points and drop down to No.29, also surrendering the British No.1 spot to Cam Norrie.<\/p>\n
It is an opponent Draper has never faced before but the Briton goes in as the overwhelming favourite having defeated Carlos Alcaraz in the final at this venue last year.<\/p>\n
Perhaps a more intriguing battle will be Draper against his fitness with him suffering a 164-day gap between matches but he suggested he would not risk playing if he did not believe he was fit enough to last the tournament.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis injury has definitely hardened me a fair bit,\u201d he told Sky Sports.<\/p>\n
MORE NEWS ON T365<\/strong><\/p>\n Alex Eala \u2018excited\u2019 for Coco Gauff rematch after prevailing in Indian Wells thriller<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Amanda Anisimova makes Emma Raducanu \u2018high quality\u2019 comment ahead of Indian Wells meeting<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve had certain injuries in the past but when you do so well and when you get to the goal that you finally want to get to.<\/p>\n \u201cBeing in a good position, competing for great tournaments and then something like this happens.<\/p>\n \u201cYou definitely start to question yourself and it makes you quite sad in a way.<\/p>\n \u201cI always think there\u2019s only one response to any sort of hardship or adversity and that\u2019s to improve and be better for it.<\/p>\n \u201cSo, I\u2019m proud that I\u2019m coming here in a good place. Mentally, I feel good. Physically, I\u2019m in good shape.<\/p>\n \u201cI wouldn\u2019t be back if I wasn\u2019t, I\u2019m just so happy to be here and hopefully I can have a great week [at the Indian Wells].\u201d<\/p>\n Read next: Aryna Sabalenka \u2018had a feeling\u2019 about proposal after announcing engagement to Georgios Frangulis<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Want more from Tennis365? Add us as a preferred source on Google<\/a> to your favourites list for tennis coverage you can trust.<\/strong><\/p>\n The post Jack Draper looking to avoid huge ranking drop ahead of Indian Wells return<\/a> appeared first on Tennis365<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jack Draper\u2019s ATP rank could drop by more than 100% should he fail to win his opening match at Indian Wells on Saturday. The British No.1 won this tournament last year but would go on to suffer an arm injury and opted to skip the Australian Open this year, meaning he is already at a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1840\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}