{"id":11253,"date":"2025-06-22T06:04:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-22T06:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=11253"},"modified":"2025-06-22T06:04:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-22T06:04:09","slug":"lehecka-stuns-draper-to-reach-queens-final","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=11253","title":{"rendered":"Lehecka stuns Draper to reach Queen’s final"},"content":{"rendered":"
Czech world number 30 Jiri Lehecka stunned Britain’s Jack Draper to reach the Queen’s Club final with a 6-4, 4-6, 7-5 victory on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Lehecka blasted 36 winners and hit 16 aces to end Draper’s bid for a maiden final appearance at the Wimbledon warm-up event in west London.<\/p>\n

The 23-year-old will face French Open champion Carlos Alcaraz or Spanish veteran Roberto Bautista Agut in Sunday’s final.<\/p>\n

“It means a lot. You don’t meet a player like Jack every day, he’s an amazing competitor,” Lehecka said.<\/p>\n

“It’s not easy to use my serve (on grass) but I’ve been working on it for the last few weeks. I’m happy with it.”<\/p>\n

Draper was hoping to become the first British singles champion at Queen’s since five-time winner Andy Murray’s most recent victory in 2016.<\/p>\n

After booking his spot in the semi-finals Draper revealed he had held the Queen’s trophy as a child around 12 years ago.<\/p>\n

But Draper, ranked sixth in the world, will have to wait at least another year to get his hands back on the silverware after producing an unusually error-strewn display in sweltering conditions.<\/p>\n

Lehecka had already ended the hopes of one Briton at Queen’s after beating Jacob Fearnley in the quarter-finals on Friday.<\/p>\n

The 23-year-old also defeated world number 12 Alex de Minaur in his opening match of the tournament, but knocking out Draper was his biggest scalp yet.<\/p>\n

Draper’s careless double-fault gifted Lehecka a break in the opening game of the first set.<\/p>\n

The ice-cool Lehecka ignored the searing temperatures as he cruised through the rest of the set.<\/p>\n

Draper needed to apply pressure on Lehecka to get back in the match and he did exactly that in the fourth game of the second set.<\/p>\n

Even then, Lehecka staved off four break points and repelled another in the sixth.<\/p>\n

But Draper kept slugging away from the baseline and finally landed a big blow with a winner down the line on set point.<\/p>\n

Rock legend and avid tennis fan Jon Bon Jovi, watching in the stands, rose from his seat to salute Draper’s gritty fightback. AFP<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Czech world number 30 Jiri Lehecka stunned Britain’s Jack Draper to reach the Queen’s Club final with a 6-4, 4-6, 7-5 victory on Saturday. Lehecka blasted 36 winners and hit 16 aces to end Draper’s bid for a maiden final appearance at the Wimbledon warm-up event in west London. The 23-year-old will face French Open […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11253\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}