Determined Evans through to last four
Follows Djokovic win with three-set defeat of Goffin Tournament favourite Nadal suffers surprise loss to Rublev
Dan Evans might be well advised to make the short walk from Monte Carlo Country Club to Monaco’s famous casino, because everything he touches right now is turning to gold.
After Thursday’s career-best win over world No1 Novak Djokovic, Evans faced David Goffin yesterday in a high-quality quarter-final.
Goffin had all the pedigree, but it was Evans who dragged himself over the line. He let out a mighty roar when Goffin’s final forehand flew wide, concluding his 5-7, 6-3, 6-4 victory after 2 hr 41 min. “I was probably a little lucky,” Evans said. He might have been thinking about all the break points he saved: fifteen in total, from Goffin’s 17 opportunities.
This was a triumph of willpower and positive thinking. And perhaps the most impressive detail is that Evans arrived in Monaco on a losing streak of four tight matches he could have won, including a psychologically crushing reverse against 19-year-old Italian Lorenzo Musetti in which he had held four match points. Only one was needed yesterday, as Goffin folded under the pressure of serving to stay in the contest. As Evans explained later: “I did a good job in the third [set] to keep going point after point and hang in there.”
Having dropped a few places to No15 after a difficult year, Goffin is beginning to find some form again. He has an artist’s hands and such quick feet that he was able to neutralise one of Evans’s chief weapons, the low-bouncing backhand slice, by running around it and bringing his own forehand into play. But he struggled to return serve consistently, or to deal with Evans’s darting net attacks. “He has a lot of talent,” Goffin said of Evans, who also reached the last four of the doubles with fellow Briton Neal Skupski. “I knew him when I was a junior. You could see he didn’t like playing on the surface. [But] it was only him who didn’t believe he was able to play well on clay. ”
The result guarantees that Evans will equal his own career-best ranking of No26 – and he will fly higher if he overcomes Stefanos Tsitsipas in today’s semi-finals. This will be a daunting task, though, because Tsitsipas can match Evans for guile and outdo him for power.
Evans is the first Briton to reach the semi-finals of a Masters 1000 event since Andy Murray in 2016.
In the bottom half of the draw, there was another surprise as Rafael Nadal was eliminated by the heavyhitting Russian Andrey Rublev. The tournament favourrite found himself outmuscled and outrun as he suffered a 6-2, 4-6, 6-2 defeat.