Edmund wins Brit battle to face Rafa
OVER-CONFIDENCE will not be a problem for Dan Evans as he grapples with clay court tennis in the coming weeks. Faced with a first-round play-off against Kyle Edmund for the right to play Rafael Nadal at the Monte Carlo Rolex Masters, he lost 7-5, 6-1 but put it in perspective. ‘It would be great to play him but I would have been struggling for some games,’ he said. ‘Save myself some embarrassment, I guess.’ The 26-year-old Midlander was in full gallows humour mode about his prospects on the brown dirt this spring. Asked if it was helping his all-round game, he described it as ‘just an exercise — and a pointless one at that.’ He elaborated: ‘It’s just tough on the court. I’m basically rolling the ball into the service box. I’m never on top. So it’s not much fun.’ The consolation was £12,000 first-round loser’s money to go home with, and the knowledge that he had scared an initially nervy Edmund, leading 4-1 and 40-0 before being reeled in. Watching from the VIP balcony was Andy Murray. Edmund, 22, is that rare breed, a Brit who, by contrast, loves the gritty brown courts of Europe. ‘It’s pretty strange someone from Britain being so good on the clay,’ said Evans. ‘There’s going to come a point where he beats some of the real good guys on clay, there’s no doubt about that.’ Edmund, who made an almost comical catalogue of mistakes on his overheads, can test out his crunching forehand tomorrow against the nine-times champion. The young Yorkshireman will now nowhave have faced almost all the top players. ‘The first time I played Andy it was very strange, but you learn to separate things,’ he said. ‘I will have full respect for Rafa but the flipside is that he doesn’t know me.’ Murray has a bye and, like Nadal, does not play until tomorrow, when he faces the winner of today’s match between seasoned Spaniard Tommy Robredo and Luxembourg’s Gilles Muller.