Evans not ready for goodbye yet - Second Serve

In a season which became known as the year of retirements on the ATP Tour, former British number one Dan Evans had his own thoughts about how long he had left playing.

Andy Murray deciding it was the right time to stop dominated the talk in British tennis last year, while his fellow Grand Slam champions Rafael Nadal and Dominic Thiem also brought the curtain down on their careers in 2024.

At Wimbledon in June, Evans spoke about the awareness he had of coming towards the end of his career and the "stark reality" of not being able to compete at the same level he once did.

So it is telling Evans - who turns 35 in less than a fortnight - is still ploughing on, albeit largely on the ATP Challenger Tour which sits below the main tour.

Less than two years ago, he was ranked a career-high 21st in the world, but is now 190th after briefly dropping outside of the top 200 earlier this year.

"I'm enjoying playing tennis - I'm not enjoying where my ranking is, of course," Evans told the BBC 5 Live Tennis programme last week.

"I'm still trying to be a tennis player, although some people are letting it known they don't think I am."

Evans, competing in a Challenger event in Bordeaux this week before focusing on French Open qualifying, certainly still is a tennis player.

Dropping down a level demonstrates his clear love for the sport and, perhaps, a determination to spend as much time on court as possible having being banned for a year in 2017 after testing positive for cocaine.

Making the decision to stop playing professional tennis is, for many, the hardest they will make. There is no 'perfect' way to say goodbye.

Former world number one Murray, who retired after playing Olympic doubles with Evans in Paris, knew it was the right time.

It did not stop floods of tears - from the 37-year-old Scot, Evans and plenty more watching on - as the curtain came down at Roland Garros.

Thiem, who won the 2020 US Open title, retired several weeks later at his home ATP event in Vienna.

After seeing his career derailed by a debilitating wrist injury, the 31-year-old Austrian's intuition told him it was not worth carrying on any more.

"Tennis had been my whole life since a very young age so I was fighting against this inner feeling and hoping it goes away again," he told BBC Sport.

"But instead of going away or getting weaker, it got stronger and got way more into my head.

"Once I made the decision there was a mix of negative and positive emotions - sadness, fear but also a little bit of happiness and looking forward to the time after."

Evans knows the time is coming. But, for now, his inner feeling is to keep plugging away with the belief he can still compete.

"I'm still trying. I think I will get back inside the top 100 and that's my goal," he added.

"It will be a pretty good story to have dropped down to such a bad ranking and get back up."

The next rankings will not be released until next Monday, following the conclusion of the combined WTA-ATP event in Rome.

However, we already know Swiatek - whose Rome title defence ended in the third round - will drop outside the top three for the first time since March 2022.

The live projections also show Jack Draper has a chance of moving to a new career-high of fourth in the world.

With Taylor Fritz losing in the second round, the British men's number one will move above the American if he continues to win in Rome.

With the Italian Open played over a fortnight, the action at the Foro Italico takes centre stage again this week.

However, there are several tournaments on the ATP Challenger and WTA 125 tours - the tiers below the main tours - worth keeping an eye on as players look for more clay-court time going into the French Open.

Britain's Katie Boulter and Sonay Kartal are competing in the Paris 125, where the field is led by world number 17 Amanda Anisimova.

The pick of several ATP Challengers is the Bordeaux tournament.

A host of top-50 players - including huge-serving Frenchman Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard - are joined in the draw by three-time Grand Slam champion Stan Wawrinka, who opens against British number four Billy Harris.

Draper and Emma Raducanu continue to fly the British flag in the Rome singles, with both players reaching the last 16.

Jacob Fearnley, Cameron Norrie and Kartal were knocked out in the second round, while Boulter fell in round one after drawing 2021 French Open runner-up Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova.

In wheelchair tennis, there was success for Great Britain at the World Team Cup - the sport's flagship event which is the equivalent of the Davis Cup and Billie Jean King Cup.

Britain's junior team claimed their second World Team Cup title in three years after beating the United States - the defending champions - in Turkey.

The nation also claimed two bronze medals after the men's team and quad team won their medal play-off ties.

With so many professional tennis tournaments taking place across the world, and across so many levels, it can be hard to keep up with everything from one week to the next.

As part of BBC Sport's commitment to offer more for tennis fans, Second Serve will be your weekly round-up of the biggest stories in the sport.

As well as the main talking point, you can see which ATP and WTA players are making significant progress - or struggling for form, how the British contingent are doing and what the next stops on the calendars are.

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