Wawrinka Beats Evans On Another Wet Day At Queen’s Club

Stan Wawrinka had too much firepower for Daniel Evans on Wednesday at a wet and overcast Fever-Tree Championships that attempts to play catch-up after bad weather.

The seventh-seeded Swiss, who has employed the services of Daniel Vallverdu in support of his main coach Magnus Norman for the grass-court swing, was assured from the baseline in his 6-3, 6-4 first-round victory over British wild card Evans in 72 minutes. The match, contested on Centre Court at The Queen’s Club, was suspended due to a prolonged rain shower for three-and-a-quarter hours.

“I expected a tough match. He’s won more matches in the past two weeks than I have in my whole career on grass,” joked Wawrinka. “It’s been a tough two days with the rain, but I was happy to be back on this court with an amazing atmosphere. I’m really happy to have won today.”

Wawrinka, who reached the 2014 semi-finals, won the first three games of the match and led 5-3 when rain first began to fall at 2:34 p.m. local time. Upon the resumption of play at 5:49 p.m., the 34-year-old won four of the next five games, keeping Evans behind the baseline in defence.

Wawrinka, who had previously edged through two tight encounters against Evans at the 2016 US Open and in March at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, finished with a backhand winner and will next face French qualifier Nicolas Mahut, the 2007 runner-up, on Thursday.

The 29-year-old Evans came into the event on the back of consecutive ATP Challenger Tour grass-court titles in Surbiton and Nottingham. During that stretch he improved from No. 80 to No. 63 in the ATP Rankings.

No play was possible on Tuesday, when the ATP 500 grass-court tournament had a full day’s play washed out for the first time since 11 June 2012.