{"id":106519,"date":"2026-06-11T11:08:42","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T15:08:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/?p=106519"},"modified":"2026-06-11T11:08:42","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T15:08:42","slug":"dan-evans-retire-wimbledon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2026\/06\/11\/dan-evans-retire-wimbledon\/","title":{"rendered":"Dan Evans to Retire After Wimbledon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>British tennis player Dan Evans has announced he will retire from professional tennis after this year&#8217;s <a  href=\"https:\/\/www.wimbledon.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Wimbledon Championships<\/a>, drawing the curtain on a quite illustrious career defined by grit, resilience, and an unlikely rise to the top of the sport.<\/p>\n<p>The 34-year-old, widely known to fans as &#8220;Evo,&#8221; broke the news in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/DZcezCmDN3G\/?img_index=1\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">statement<\/a> shared on social media, confirming that the grass-court Grand Slam will be his final competitive tournament before stepping away from the professional game for good.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;After an incredible journey, I wanted to share some personal news with you all,&#8221; Evans wrote. &#8220;I will be retiring from professional tennis following this year&#8217;s Wimbledon Championships.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Few careers in British tennis have carried as much drama or as much heart. <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2017\/06\/27\/kyle-edmund-short-words-evans-drugs-ban\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">Evans served a 12-month ban<\/a> after testing positive for cocaine in 2017, a moment that could have ended everything before staging one of the sport&#8217;s more remarkable comebacks.<\/p>\n<p>He returned, rebuilt, and climbed to a career-high world ranking of #21 in 2022, establishing himself as one of the most reliable and entertaining players on the ATP Tour. His flat-hitting, serve-and-volley style, a refreshing throwback on the modern tour, made him a consistent thorn in the side of opponents far higher-ranked than himself.<\/p>\n<p>In his retirement statement, Evans spoke candidly about what the sport had meant to him.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This sport has given me everything,&#8221; he wrote. &#8220;The friendships, the experiences, the battles and even the hard days were special in hindsight. I have loved every single minute of being a professional tennis player.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Representing his country was a thread that ran through his career with particular significance. Evans was a stalwart of Great Britain&#8217;s Davis Cup campaigns and carried the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Union_Jack\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Union Jack<\/a> at the Olympic Games, experiences he described as the defining honour of his professional life.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Representing Great Britain in both Davis Cup and the Olympics remains the greatest honour of my career and something I will cherish for the rest of my life,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Evans also took time to acknowledge the people behind the scenes who made the journey possible. He thanked his parents, wife, and wider family for their support &#8220;through every high and low.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He extended similar gratitude to coaches, trainers, <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2025\/09\/12\/daniel-evans-suffers-awful-injury-guangzhou\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">physiotherapists<\/a>, and sponsors throughout his career, noting that while &#8220;the list is too long to name individually,&#8221; each had played a part in shaping who he became.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"max-width: px\"><smartframe-embed class=\"smartframe_wp_element\" customer-id=\"8afcbf7a9ed3fd6bf7763b62addc7cf8\" image-id=\"3He6MBekxHod\" style=\"width: 100%; display: inline-flex; max-width: 3600px; aspect-ratio: 3600\/2871;\" ><\/smartframe-embed><\/p>\n<p>With Wimbledon still ahead, Evans has made clear he intends to go out swinging.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m looking forward to finishing on a high across these final two tournaments and giving everything I have one last time,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>British tennis will be poorer for his absence, but on the sport&#8217;s grandest stage, Dan Evans will get the send-off his career deserves.<\/p>\n<p><em>Main Photo Credit: Robert Deutsch-USA TODAY Sports<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>British tennis player Dan Evans has announced he will retire from professional tennis after this year&#8217;s Wimbledon Championships, drawing the curtain on a quite illustrious career defined by grit, resilience, and an unlikely rise to the top of the sport. The 34-year-old, widely known to fans as &#8220;Evo,&#8221; broke the news in a statement shared [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4883,"featured_media":85266,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,2,9,6],"tags":[43844,113,86],"class_list":["post-106519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-atp","category-featured","category-news","category-wimbledon","tag-2026-wimbledon","tag-dan-evans","tag-daniel-evans"],"modified_by":"Yesh Ginsburg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4883"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106519"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106519\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":106525,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106519\/revisions\/106525"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}