DAN EVANS successfully continued his winning return from a drugs ban, comfortably moving through the final qualifying round of the Glasgow Trophy tennis tournament to book his place in the main draw.
This event at Scotstoun is the Englishman’s first tournament back having served a year’s suspension for testing positive for cocaine at last April’s Barcelona Open. Evans was granted a wildcard into the tournament and after a straight sets win in the first round of qualifying on Saturday, he recorded a similar result, defeating Ireland’s Sam Barry 6-4, 6-1 in comfortable fashion yesterday.
Prior to his suspension, Evan was ranked as high as 41 in the world and reached the fourth round of last year’s Australian Open and while those results suggested that he should breeze past his Irish opponent, who is ranked a lowly 488 in the world, things were not quite so straightforward.
Evans started strongly and broke Barry in the fourth game of the first set. But the Irishman broke straight back and the pair became engaged in a physical and compelling tussle for the remainder of the set.
However, it was Evans who showed glimpses of his former brilliance and broke again at the crucial time to take the set 6-4. From there, he gained control of the match, with Barry making a number of unforced errors and Evans visibly gaining in confidence, the Englishman ran away with the second set 6-1.
Evans was relatively contented with both the result and particularly the fact that his win yesterday was an improvement on his first round performance, although he was not entirely satisfied with his showing.
“It was difficult,” the 28-year-old said.
“He was a little awkward - I didn’t serve that well so it was good to get through. That can only be mental because I’ve been serving really well in practice but it just feels different in matches.
“I thought I played better from the back - every match will get me better so it’s just hopefully getting through the first few and staying on the match court. I felt better on the court movement-wise than I did on Saturday so everything is going in the right direction. There’s two weeks off after this tournament so as many matches as possible would be great.”
There have been some that have suggested that, due to his previous lofty standing in the game, Evans should breeze to the title here in Glasgow. He will face eighth seed and world number 302 Lucas Miedler of Austria in the first round of the main draw today and is in the same half as top seed Lukas Lacko of Slovakia, who is ranked 105 in the world. But he is too experienced to be looking too far ahead and admits that he remains uncertain about quite what level he will be able to reach over the next week.
“I’ve not put any pressure on myself because I just didn’t know where I was at when I started here,” he said.
“Now, there’s probably a little bit more expectation but it just depends who I play, how I play and how I feel. It’s five matches. There’s some good players so maybe ask me if I think I can win it in two matches time, if I’m still going, then it’ll be an easier answer.
“It’s too hard to gauge how long it will take to get back to where I was. I could go the rest of this year winning not many matches. It’s literally just about taking it day by day at the moment.”
All Scottish interest in the qualifying rounds ended on day one but there will be renewed cause for the home crowd to pack the stands in round one of the main draw when Aidan McHugh takes to the court against third seed David Guez of France tomorrow.
For Tennis Scotland National Coach, Colin Fleming, this tournament coming to Glasgow is not only a huge boost for his young players, but also for the sport as a whole.
“It’s so good to have an event like this in Scotland, not only for the players but also the stands are close to full and you see young kids buzzing to have the chance to watch this level of tennis,” he said.
“Having a tournament like this here is very important for the development of the sport. We’ve had some great tennis players but we really want to become a bit of a tennis nation.
“You want to have big tournaments in this country and then there’ll be the growth that will come off the back of that – people will go back to their clubs with that enthusiasm and that’s an important spin-off.”
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