Jack Draper has continued to impress on the ATP Tour after reaching the final of the Qatar Open.
Draper was beaten by Andrey Rublev in the Doha final, but has still been rewarded for his week in the Qatari capital.
As a result, Draper is now at a career-high ranking as he continues his impressive rise following reaching the US Open semi-finals last year.
Novak Djokovic messaged both Draper and Rublev following the Qatar Open final, with the Serbian exiting the tournament much earlier after a first round defeat to Matteo Berrettini.
Following his success in Doha, Draper has withdrawn from the Dubai Tennis Championships and will now turn his attention towards the sunshine double.
Draper is now the world number 12, as the Brit moves closer to breaking into the top 10 for the first time in his career.
When speaking about the 23-year-old’s new ranking, former top 10 player Jack Sock backed Draper to break into that exclusive group before this year’s US Open.
“I think so,” Sock said on the Nothing Major Podcast. “He plays a massive game. Lefties are always tough to play. The guy serves cannons and hits the ball huge from the baseline. Seems to have an all court dynamic, as he’s comfortable moving in.
I think when he is firing on all cylinders, he can compete with everybody out there pretty much and it seems like he has a little bit more of some up and down results than some of the guys ranked around there. But if you are already 12 in the world, I mean why not keep going and slide into the top 10 here by US Open or Fall?”
At this stage of the season last year, Draper was ranked at world number 50 as he attempted to climb back up the ranks following multiple injury struggles.
Not only has Sock experienced watching Draper, he also played the Briton at a Challenger tournament in Fairfield, California.
Draper was just 17-years-old at the time, but managed to beat 14th seed Sock, 3-6 7-6(2) 6-3, before going onto progress to the quarter-finals.
Despite being beaten in that match, Sock admitted that Draper’s game has come on a lot since then and suggested that he is now much more consistent.
“Not when I played him. I probably wasn’t at my best at that time,” said Sock. “I wasn’t even sure how old he was at the time. I had heard about him a little before that.
“But he was a lefty and serving every ball to my backhand. We were playing in random Northern California. I thought his good moments during the match were very impressive but it was kind of a rollercoaster out there, he was good for a few games and then at the time pretty shocking for a few games.
“Obviously he has buttoned that all up and got much more physical as well. I think he can only keep moving forward, he is clearly showing it month in and month out. He got the better of me there in North Cal and he went this way [up] and I went this way [down].”
Draper has moved away from the Challenger scene now and is next set to compete at Indian Wells, where he lost in the first round last year and can gain a significant number of ranking points when the tournament gets underway on Wednesday March 5.
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