Drug ban was a dark time, admits Evans ahead of comeback
and the build up is going to be busy as well.
“That is a major commitment, and while I will be overseeing and captaining the team, I will be taking part in the individual championships.
“I’m a member of a Great Britain team that is travelling to Canada in August. So that, along with our own National Championships in July over in Bisley, which members of the Northern Ireland team in the full bore will be competing.
“I will be doing all that and into the future, I don’t plan to give up at all.”
Prior to the Games, he was in South Africa in March for a training camp ahead of their Championships. Even going back to January/February time, he was competing in an event in New Zealand.
It was huge preparation to put in for the games and he admits his disappointment at not succeeding.
“We were very close,” he sighs.
“It was frustrating not to have got a medal this time because we were well prepared and in my assessment, I felt we had a 5050 chance. It would have been nice to get one, yet we shouldn’t be too disappointed, it went well, we came close and it just didn’t happen.”
All this, despite his sight deteriorating over the last number of years. And then there is the theory advanced by Steve Davis that as you get older in aim-based disciplines, your nerve starts to go.
It’s a thought that is rejected by Calvert who states: “If anything, for me, it is the other way around. As you get more experience of competing at a high level, then the pressure that can affect your performance is easier to handle.
“The pressure of competition and the need to succeed and not succeeding, that in itself is a distraction to your performance. With experience and time and exposure to competition, it becomes easier to cope with that distraction and therefore rather than it becoming more of a problem, that aspect becomes less of a problem.”
He adds: “When you come in as a youngster, nobody expects you to perform.
“They might hope for it and they might think you have the potential.
“Once you have achieved success and you are at the top, then people, your colleagues and peers have seen you perform at a high level and they expect you to stay there so there is more pressure on you to do so.
“It becomes more difficult to meet up to those expectations as they are much higher than when you come in at a young age.”
So on and on he goes. A natural phenomenon. DAN Evans returns to competition this weekend having served his 12-month suspension for a drugs offence and insists he will never make the same mistake again.
The 27-year-old from Birmingham was banned last year after testing positive for cocaine.
“If you saw the ruins it left behind, just failing a drugs test, never mind what that does to people, you’d be pretty confident I won’t take that drug again,” Evans said as he prepared for his first match in the qualifying tournament for next week’s Glasgow Trophy Challenger event.
“It’s the worst thing I’ve ever done. It’s a shocking thing to do. It’s let down many people.”
Evans, who has been given a wild card into the tournament, has kept a low profile for the last year but, ahead of his return, agreed to talk yesterday to a small group of tennis journalists.
Evans admitted last year that he had taken cocaine while out of competition, which is not banned. However, he tested positive at last year’s Barcelona Open because he had left some of the cocaine in a washbag which had contaminated other medication.
Until two months ago the terms of Evans’ ban meant that he was unable to play at any tennis centres affiliated to the Lawn Tennis Association, which accounts for the vast majority of venues in Britain.
Evans spent most of the first nine months of his ban living with his girlfriend in Cheltenham and admitted that he had struggled to fill his days.
He said there had been “some terrible moments” in that time.
“I was probably the worst boyfriend there has ever been for nine months,” he said. “At the start I was heartbroken not to be playing tennis, but I made the mistake so that’s what it was. I couldn’t do anything about it.
“I just had to do other things, but there isn’t that much you can do in the day when other people are working. I was living away from anybody else.”
Having to break the news about his failed drugs test to those people closest to him had been “a terrible conversation”.
He added: “There are so many people when you’re involved in tennis who help you.
“The family’s the obvious one, but all the other people, the embarrassment you put your girlfriend’s mum through, her parents. That’s not what they want their daughter around is it?”
Asked if he had received much support from those outside his closest circles, Evans said: “You’d be hard pushed to find many people who, when people are down, come out of the woodwork for you. That’s just life, isn’t it?”
Evans said that he had little contact with anyone else in tennis apart from Mark Hilton, his former coach, and Leon Smith, Britain’s Davis Cup captain.
He admitted that he had doubts about whether he would return to the sport. “I had doubts every day,” he said.
“I still have doubts now. So until I see what happens, until I’m back where I should be, there will still be doubts until there are two digits next to my name (until he is back inside the world’s top 100), let’s put it that way.”
Evans returned to practice on the first day possible two months ago at Edgbaston. He said he had been blood-tested four times since he began training again and has been helping with the Lawn Tennis Association’s anti-drugs programme.
“It’s good to be back on the court at a tournament preparing for some matches,” he said, though he said he finds it difficult to assess his level of tennis at the moment.
“I haven’t hit with many really good players, no one as high as I have been playing before, so it’s tough to judge,” he said. “I feel pretty good in myself, but then there’s nothing like playing matches and getting your match fitness.”