Dan Evans delivers perfect riposte after being deemed not good enough to train with Bernard Tomic
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Updated 20/01/2017 at 17:13 GMT
Dan Evans has done much more than simply defy the odds in reaching the Australian Open fourth round, he's also avenged a number of insults, writes Dan Quarrell.
Britain's Daniel Evans consoles Australia's Bernard Tomic after winning the Men's singles third round match
Image credit: Reuters
Evans was as fired up and hungry as he has ever appeared on court as he continued his remarkable run at Melbourne Park on Friday morning, and the manner of his triumph over Bernard Tomic said a great deal.
In joining Andy Murray in the fourth round, he gave Britain two men at that stage of a Grand Slam for the first time since 2002 when Tim Henman and Greg Rusedski reached that stage at Wimbledon - but of equal surprise and significance, the result meant no Australian men remain in the draw.
On a personal level, Evans had very little to lose but a number of wrongs to right.
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Highlights: Evans downs local Tomic to reach last 16
Most strikingly, the victory over the 27th seed provided a very satisfying riposte for Evans given the treatment he received from the Australian's father in Miami in 2013, something he has chosen to not speak of when asked about the incident at this year's tournament.
Evans had requested to train with Tomic in Miami, but was told in no uncertain terms to forget it, because he was simply not good enough to share a court with his son, as he recounted at the time.
His dad sort of fobbed me off and said I wasn’t good enough to practise with him. We went to practise. It was all booked. Got to the practice hut. No, no, he’s a qualifier, I’m not hitting with you.
A bit embarrassing, but hey, I don’t think it was Bernard’s doing. He wasn’t there.
Evans insisted that there was no bad blood between him and Tomic, but his victory on Hisense Arena must have tasted very sweet for the point that he was making, even just to himself.
Then there is the case of the logo-free T-shirts Evans is sporting.
With Nike having decided to drop the British number three from their sponsorship roster, he purchased 18 T-shirts from Uniqlo last week, something he was almost immediately asked about after the match.
I am happy with them at the minute. One shrunk in the wash so I had to change it, but I reckon they look all right.
This is not like a young star arriving on the big stage prematurely with no sponsors to speak of; rather, this is a journeyman pro who has been backed before, only to suffer the indignity of losing that support.
It's impossible to not see this resurgence from Evans at the first Grand Slam of 2017 as a sort of statement. A marvellous, inspired and hopefully for him very significant statement. After years of having his motivation questioned, Evans provided a resounding demonstration of his desire to be scrapping at this level of the game.
The hunger and fire shown by Evans was truly inspiring given all he was up against, and it was those fighting qualities which dragged him through tense second and third set tie-breaks as the home crowd gave him more than a few issues to contend with.
At 4-3 up in the second set, Evans became angered by a spectator coughing very loudly in the crowd while he was serving and requested that umpire Emmanuel Joseph had the individual in question removed. But rather than lose his poise, the incident appeared to only further spark his motivation and spur him on to a further level of intensity.
Nothing was going to derail Evans in his bid for a further taste of glory, and now he has achieved the furthest point of a Grand Slam in his entire career. With nothing to lose and in the form of his life, who is to say he does not have a chance of upsetting 12th seed Jo-Wilfried Tsonga against the odds in the fourth round?
Maybe now his form warrants a T-shirt that doesn't shrink; maybe now people will stop joking about him hitting a nightclub after every set he wins; maybe now he can even dare to ask a higher-ranked player for the privilege of a practice session.
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