Draper upsets Hurkacz, advances to Tokyo QFs

pa href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/jack-draper/d0co/overview'Jack Draper/a continued to make his mark against the ATP Tour's top stars in 2024 by downing second seed a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/hubert-hurkacz/hb71/overview'Hubert Hurkacz/a 6-4, 6-4 on Friday at the a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/tournaments/tokyo/329/overview'Kinoshita Group Japan Open Tennis Championships/a. /p

pDraper, at a career high of World No. 20 after reaching his maiden major semi-final at the a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/tournaments/us-open/560/overview'US Open/a, clinched his third win in four matches against Top 10 opponents by defeating Hurkacz in Tokyo. The 22-year-old built on his momentum from New York by winning 76 per cent of his first-serve points to defeat the World No. 8 in one hour and 24 minutes. /p

p ldquo;I was pleased with a lot of things today, I thought my attitude was really good and I got myself out of some tough situations,rdquo; Draper said in his post match interview. ldquo;I played some pretty big points on my terms and thatrsquo;s something Irsquo;ve wanted to do. /p

p ldquo;Hersquo;s probably the best server in the world right now so I'm really happy with my composure, the way I approached the game and hopefully I can carry this momentum forward.rdquo; /p

blockquote class="twitter-tweet"

p lang="en" dir="ltr"Look at what it means to the fans ☺️a href="https://twitter.com/japanopentennis?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"@japanopentennis/a | a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/kinoshitajotennis?src=hashamp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"#kinoshitajotennis/a a href="https://t.co/9uKde0Lmvm"pic.twitter.com/9uKde0Lmvm/a/p

mdash; ATP Tour (@atptour) a href="https://twitter.com/atptour/status/1839516028889633072?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"September 27, 2024/a/blockquote

script async="" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"/script

pDraper also saved all three of break points he faced, according to Infosys ATP Stats, as he improved his Lexus ATP Head2Head record to 2-4 against the Pole. The Briton will next face a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/ugo-humbert/hh26/overview'Ugo Humbert/a, who eased past a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/brandon-nakashima/n0ae/overview'Brandon Nakashima/a 6-3, 6-2. /p

pHurkaczrsquo;s ambitions to play in the a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/tournaments/nitto-atp-finals/605/overview'Nitto ATP Finals/a in Turin suffered a setback with his loss. The 27-year-old currently sits 13th in the PIF ATP Live Race to Turin, 665 points off eighth place as he chases a third appearance at the prestigious season finale. /p

p /p

[NEWSLETTER FORM]