Edmund wins battle of Brits
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 playoff against Kyle edmund for the right to play rafael Nadal at the Monte Carlo rolex Masters, he lost 7-5, 6-1 — but still managed to put it in perspective.
‘It would be great to play him (Nadal) but I would have been struggling for some games,’ he admitted. ‘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.
Indeed, world No 44 evans actually led 4-1 and 40-0 before being reeled in by the man who is just one place below him in the rankings.
Watching their one hour and 20 minutes encounter from the VIP balcony was Andy Murray, who is making his comeback here after a month on the sidelines with an elbow injury.
edmund and evans had only played each other once before, in a Challenger event final in Dallas last year, which edmund also won.
The first set saw more breaks of serve than holds, edmund rallying from that three-game deficit after an error-strewn start to put together four service breaks of his own.
evans missed two chances to break at the start of the second set and, having held off that surge, edmund eased to victory with another four breaks before rounding things off with his second ace.
edmund, 22, is that rare breed, a Brit who, by contrast, loves the gritty brown courts of europe.
The vanquished evans noted: ‘It’s pretty strange someone from Britain being so good on the clay.
‘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 nine-time tournament champion Nadal, who has lost just four times at the event.
The young Yorkshireman will now have faced almost all of 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 14-time Grand Slam winner Nadal, does not play until tomorrow, when he faces the winner of today’s match between seasoned Spaniard Tommy robredo and Luxemburg’s Gilles Muller.