TATTOOED on his left arm reads an Oscar Wilde quote: “Every saint has a past, every sinner has a future.”
And it couldn’t be more true for tennis ace Dan Evans, 34.
Evans is currently smashing it out the park at Paris 2024 alongside Andy Murray in the Olympics doubles tennis – having made it through to the quarter finals together.
He’s now British No. 3 and world No. 21.
But his success is a far cry from his bad boy past, having got into trouble on numerous occasions with the Lawn Tennis Association – and even getting banned from playing tennis for a year after cocaine was found in his washbag.
“I’ve been stupid, no doubt about that,” he told the Mail last year.
And his girlfriend Aleah, who he’s been with since 2017, was there throughout his year from hell, helping him through, during which he says he was “the worst boyfriend there has ever been”.
Evans was just 18 years old – and Britain’s third ranked junior boy – when he was first stripped of his funding by the LTA for four months.
It came after he and his tennis partner Daniel Smethurst, then 17, had been out boozing in a Wimbledon nightclub until 3am on the day they were playing their second round doubles.
They lost in straight sets to Australia‘s Bernard Tomic and Matt Reid that day.
As well as losing his funding, Evans was denied wild cards to tournaments and access to practice centres and LTA coaching staff.
In 2010, during the Davis Cup, Evans was defeated four times – with one being against a player 269 places below him at 521 in the world and who had never played a match on the ATP World Tour.
This humiliating defeat led to the resignation of Davis Cup Captain John Lloyd, and the LTA cut Evans’ funding again.
His funding was cut again two years later, as the LTA claimed he wasn’t taking the sport seriously, after a series of losses.
By his own admission, in 2013, Evans said: “It’s because I don’t train hard enough and don’t work hard enough day in and day out. I’m obviously pretty bad at my job. It’s up to me, it’s not up to anyone else.
“I want to push on. It’s not that I don’t want to do it, I obviously want to do it. It’s just for whatever reasons, distractions – I need to stay there and just play tennis and that’s it.
“It’s easier said than done. Thousands of people have told me to do it but I’m yet to do it for a sustained period of time.
“When I do do it, I obviously play pretty well. I definitely think I will be top 100, and I still think that.”
With his parents struggling to afford the £20,000-£25,000 fees necessary for Evans to maintain a tennis career, there was a strong possibility he was going to quit altogether.
However, he managed to get a last-minute place in the 2013 David Cup, and made history when he defeated Evgeny Donskoy in straight sets.
The last time Great Britain had come from 2–0 down to win a Davis Cup tie was 83 years before.
The LTA once again agreed to support Evans with a coach – but even his peers were throwing volleys at him, when he started to lose again.
Obviously nobody wants to have regrets and I have got quite a few of them from when I was 18
Dan Evans
Talking of his lack of application and effort, Wimbledon legend Tim Henman said: “When you talk about commitment there are no grey areas, you are either in or you are out –- and at the moment he is out.”
Hitting back, Evans told Birmingham Live: “Obviously nobody wants to have regrets and I have got quite a few of them from when I was 18.
“But that was in the past and now I am in quite a good position to kick on and go again. I am lucky that I have got another chance.
“I was probably thinking about other things rather than winning tennis matches. And those other things get pretty boring after a while.
“There is only so much of seeing your mates, going out and stuff like that. It’s good fun for a while, going out at the weekend but after a few weeks you see other people doing well who you’re better than and it is not much fun.
Evans sparked fears about his commitment again in 2015, when he was fined £350 for failing to turn up for the F4 Futures event.
He then disappeared for three months, and struggled with a knee injury that sent his ranking to an all-time low of 772 in May.
However, he and the rest of the Great Britain team won the Davis Cup for the first time since 1936 that year – and won the Team of the Year Award at the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Show too.
By 2017, Evans had managed to make it into the World Top 50.
However, his dreams came crashing down when drug testers found traces of cocaine in his washbag at the Barcelona Open.
It wasn’t easy, I had bad thoughts. You’ve let people down…[The psychologist] said I had so much pent-up anger from the ban.
Dan Evans
Evans claimed he took a relatively small amount of cocaine out of competition, but a permitted medication he was taking had been “contaminated” by it, after he accidentally put the leftover cocaine in the pocket of his washbag.
He was banned for a year.
Recalling the moment he had to tell his parents he’d failed his drugs test, Evans told the Mail: “I told my dad and he just kept jet-washing the patio.
“I think it was just another piece of bad news. I’ve told him plenty over the years. He carried on. It’s what good parents do. They don’t overreact. They just told me in simple terms what I was and how we could move on.”
During his year away, Evans confesses he drank a lot and put on three stone in weight.
“It wasn’t easy, I had bad thoughts,” he said last year. “You’ve let people down. It was difficult not to compete for a year.”
He sought the help of a sports psychologist, who described him as “one of the angriest people” he had ever spoken to.
Evans added: “[The psychologist] said I had so much pent-up anger from the ban and how I was speaking about things.
“I left social media when it happened. I was worried what my peers would think, and the people watching.”
Evans met his girlfriend Aleah when she was working in Winchcombe back in 2017.
Not much is known about her but she has been seen watching Evans from the stands when he’s played at Wimbledon in the past and has been seen court-side during the Olympics in Paris.
She also helped him through the tough period, and stuck by him, despite the fact he says: “I was probably the worst boyfriend there has ever been for nine months.”
He added: “The embarrassment you put your girlfriend’s parents through — that’s not what they want their daughter round is it?
“And then you’ve got your mum or sister at work. It’s not a situation I hope anyone will be in again.”
Evans’ parents Bernadette and David also helped him through his tough year, and he says he’s “indebted” to them.
He told the Express: “They’ve done a lot for me.
“Electricians and nurses don’t earn lot of money and tennis is a hell of a lot of money. And yeah, you know, I’m forever indebted to them and hopefully they can enjoy their life now and look back at it.
“I think that’s important for me is to give back to the people who helped me. And that’s not just my mum and dad, by the way, it’s everybody that helped me. I try to help them out now and it’s an important thing to me that it’s not just me enjoying being good, it’s everybody around me is on that journey with me to enjoy life.”
The embarrassment you put your girlfriend’s parents through — that’s not what they want their daughter round is it?
Dan Evans
Far from giving up, Evans bounced back in a stratospheric way.
When Evans returned from his ban in April 2018, he was ranked 1,195th in the world.
By August, he was in the top 300, and a year later he was in the Top 50.
By October 2019, he was British men’s No. 1 – now No. 3 – and he’s currently World No. 21.
Last year, he said: “I’ve been stupid, no doubt about that. I’ve been wasteful, no doubt about that either.
“Listen, anyone who did what I did and threw away a year of my life and ruined other people’s lives as well, would be stupid, of course, wasteful, yeah, idiot, yeah. I’d be a bigger idiot if I carried on doing that stuff and didn’t try to get back and be a good tennis player.”
In his personal life, Evans also seems to have calmed down, living in leafy Cheltenham with his girlfriend Aleah.
He added: “I know what I want out of life now. It’s difficult when you’re younger, I thought I was missing out if I wasn’t going out.
“Now I know I’m not really missing out and I’d prefer to spend the evening with my girlfriend. She gets p***ed off with me sometimes but we have a good relationship.
“There’s always something better to do rather than wake up hungover, that isn’t in the plans any more. I did have a few beers one night in Indian Wells (in March) and threw up the next morning. I definitely feel healthier as I get older I want to look after my body better.”
And he’s given up cocaine for good.
He said: “It’s a shocking drug and not just in sport — it’s just terrible in life. It’s a life-ruiner.
“It’s the worst thing I’ve ever done. It’s a shocking thing to do, it let down many people, not just that it brought unwanted press to tennis.
“Luckily I was never in the position where I needed to get help for that drug. But I won’t ever take it again and it’s that simple.
“If you saw the ruins it left behind just failing a drugs test, never mind what that does to people, you’d be pretty confident I won’t take that drug again.”
