As Jack Draper crumpled into a chair and covered his face after an afternoon of high-octane, quality tennis concluded in disappointment in the opening stanza of Great Britain’s 2-0 defeat to Serbia, his despair was clear for all to see. With Novak Djokovic looming in the second rubber of their Davis Cup quarter-final tie, practically every spectator in Málaga’s sold-out José María Martín Carpena Arena was aware how essential the first was.
After two bitter tiebreaks, the match had escaped him. But Draper had not taken many wrong steps on the court. He had fought tooth and nail to remain in the opening set before his level dipped in the tiebreak, then he rose again until the end of a second set that boiled down to a couple of points.
