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WIMBLEDON

June 23, 2009

Daniel Evans

LONDON, ENGLAND

N. DAVYDENKO/D. Evans
6-2, 6-3, 6-3

Q. What were your impressions of that, first time you played a guy with sort of a high ranking?
DANIEL EVANS: He just does a lot of things better than the people who I play against normally. That's it, really. There's a lot of things, like they make the same mistakes but not as many. He's a good tennis player, you know? He's been as high as 5 in the world or 4. Good tennis player.

Q. Were you nervous for the start of it?
DANIEL EVANS: Well, at the start I was -- I didn't think there would be that much support. When I got down there it was just pretty loud, that was all. I'd be lying to say I wasn't a little nervous, but I got into it pretty soon, yeah.

Q. How many people watched your last match?
DANIEL EVANS: I can't remember. Eastbourne, there was a few. I played Boodles, the exhibition, so I got quite a feel for it, but nowhere near as many as this.

Q. Was it enjoyable, though, to get it under your belt?
DANIEL EVANS: Yeah, I mean, it's -- if you look at it on paper, it's horrible for me. He hits quite hard. It could have been a nasty first round, like score line. But I think I did well out there, you know?

Q. What have you taken from it? What positives have you taken from that?
DANIEL EVANS: Well, I mean, you sort of understand where you are against him. You get a good perception of what he does compared to what you do and what the players you train with do. That's it, really. I mean, he's better than me, you know?
I knew when I saw the draw, most of the players in the draw are better than me. But to get him was a good challenge. Yeah, he's just a good player.

Q. What's happened to you in the last couple of months? Your form really took off sort of until it seems like mid-April you struggled a bit.
DANIEL EVANS: I went to Turkey after Jersey, and I rolled my ankle. And then I got ill with like the flu sort of thing. And I've been ill a few times since then. That's it, really. If you look, I have not really played that much. That's it. There's no real like --

Q. Mystery?
DANIEL EVANS: Yeah, it's not like I've not been training hard or anything. I just have not played that much. It was just a bit unlucky, really. It's not like my form has dropped. If you don't train, if you don't get a chance to train for a long period of time, you can't expect to play well. That's it.

Q. What's next for you?
DANIEL EVANS: Probably Manchester Challengers next.

Q. When is that, please?
DANIEL EVANS: It's two weeks, I think, two or three weeks.

Q. So will you hang around here for a while and watch some stuff?
DANIEL EVANS: No. If I'm out of the tournament I don't like hanging around.

Q. Does it inspire you playing someone like that, or does it make you think I'll never get there?
DANIEL EVANS: No, and that's the thing. If I had come out and lost 1, 2 and 1 and had no chance in any rallies or the same score line and had no chance in any rallies, then I'd have been a bit, oh, God.
But it's achievable. I'm not going to sit here and say I'm going to get to that, but it's easily achievable. He makes the same errors as I make, he just doesn't do as many.
In a way it's good what happened today. Obviously I lost, which is not good. But it's good what happened to find out what the level is.

Q. Did he say anything to you afterwards?
DANIEL EVANS: No. I mean, I don't know how good his English is. I'm not sure about his personality.

Q. Obviously it's sort of well-known last year that you had a few issues during this tournament. Can you just talk about what's moved on for you from 12 months and what's sort of different about you 12 months on from last year?
DANIEL EVANS: Not a lot, really. I was just being stupid at the wrong -- I wasn't even being stupid, I just went out at the wrong time. Everybody knows what it's like when people ask you to do something, and there's a lot of them saying, come on, let's do that. You're all lads. It's pretty hard to stand up and say, no, no, I'm not doing that, I'm playing junior doubles tomorrow. I was stupid when I did it, but nothing has changed. I do exactly the same every single day. I train.
When I went out in Wimbledon, I didn't stop going out when I went home. It was just stupidity at the time, that was it.

Q. It's fair to say you won't be doing that again?
DANIEL EVANS: No, I'll be getting out of London as soon as possible (laughter).

Q. Are you tempted by the bright lights then?
DANIEL EVANS: No, not really. I've got a good group of friends, you know. You can probably tell I'm quite -- I talk a lot and I've got a lot of friends and I like having a laugh. I don't go out every night, but I like to go out. It's not what Andy does, but it's what I do.

Q. Are you aware of sort of the pressures of -- would you prefer it if there were maybe more guys in your from our country in your position and ranking and age? Would that sort of -- if there were more people kind of pushing each other?
DANIEL EVANS: Yeah, it would help for sure. And as well, if you are the only one, then I don't know if -- in ways it's good because you think you've got a good feeling about yourself. You know you're the best player in that age. And in other ways sometimes when you're down, you want somebody to pick you up and push you.
There's easy ways out when you're ahead of other people. You think, I don't have to do this today, they'll never catch me. But they're the dangers, isn't it? If we're honest, there's never been really like a group of players in the same. There's always been one, Andy was on his own.
In a way there's people around me who are better than me. I'm training with Boggo who's better than me ranking-wise. There's always somebody to look up to. And then if there's not there, there's Andy, you know?

Q. Are you quite conscious of the fact that the nation might be sort of looking already to who's going to be the next Andy Murray?
DANIEL EVANS: I don't know. I mean, everybody just wants Andy to win at the minute, which is good. I don't think anybody is really bothered about it. As soon as Andy keeps going -- it's sort of good Andy is winning. It's better. It's better than if he goes out -- say if he played yesterday, if he had lost yesterday, all the guys would go on to the other person. But whilst he's winning, I don't think any eyes or going on any of the others. Nobody knows who we are anyways, that's the best way. And rightly so. Let's be honest, we're all 200, 300; they shouldn't know who we are.

Q. You get a nice prize check now. Is that the biggest that you'll have had so far?
DANIEL EVANS: Yeah. It is, yeah.

Q. Does it make a difference to you?
DANIEL EVANS: I mean, it's nice, isn't it? It's one of the things that comes with playing the Grand Slams, and it's an incentive. If you keep getting in these tournaments obviously in years to come you earn a lot of money, and that's some people's incentives, to earn a lot of money.

Q. What are you going to spend it on, anything?
DANIEL EVANS: I don't know. Probably not a lot. I'll just keep it, rainy day. I might not be a tennis player soon, might be stacking shelves.

Q. From what you were saying there, money is not the incentive for you anyway?
DANIEL EVANS: No. Well, I like to compete, and I've always been like that, and that's it, really. I enjoy competing.

Q. Has it been improved by X --
DANIEL EVANS: Yeah, for sure I'm not going to be 25 still asking for wild cards, simple as that. You've got to earn a living sooner or later, and if you're not earning a living, I won't be 23, 24, still trying to get to the top 100 and playing Futures and Challengers. I don't know, I think it's just respect for yourself, you know? I've got bigger things, I think, to do than just sit around like that and do that in Futures. You see them every week, week in and week out, and half of them are destroying young hopes. I've played them, and they beat me, and it's like, oh, God, you lost to him again. I don't want to be doing that in four or five years.

Q. What else could you do? A lot of people keep going and doing tennis because they perhaps couldn't do anything else. You sound like you've got --
DANIEL EVANS: No, I mean, you put it into this perspective; there's no point in sitting at a Futures event winning two rounds, you make Â£170. What's the point? You'd have to work four days for that because you'd be there two days before a tournament. Would you do it?

Q. It would be a promotion for me (laughter). Have you got an idea about career-wise --
DANIEL EVANS: No, haven't had to think about it. Tesco's are offering, though (laughter).

End of FastScripts

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