Roger Federer made his much-anticipated return on the ATP tour a few weeks back at the Qatar Open. It wasn’t a happy ending, but Federer did get his first few matches in over 13 months. In order to get himself to speed, Federer practiced with British No. 1 Dan Evans for two weeks before the Qatar Open.

Incidentally, the Qatar Open draw placed Dan Evans against Federer. They both faced each other in the second round of the event. Before their match, both the players practiced with each other for two weeks and thus knew each other’s game. Eventually, Federer came out on top after tough three sets.

In a recent interview with ATP, Evans spoke about the experience of practicing with Federer. The British player is happy with the experience he gained despite early exits in Doha and Qatar. He said:

“It’s been, it’s been good to get some good practice with, with Roger, you know. Yeah, it’s, it was good preparation for the sort of swing going on in Doha and Dubai although I didn’t do great.”

Dan Evans won the first title of his career this year at the Murray River Open in Melbourne. From there, he has surged to a career-high ranking of 26th and is looking to cash in on the training with Federer in the coming weeks. He said:

“But I feel I’m in a good, good place with my tennis, hopefully, you know, win some matches this week and look back on that as you know good preparation.”

Roger Federer on training with Dan Evans

Federer spoke highly about his training partner in his post-match interview back at the Qatar Open and said, “It was a great match, Dan played a good match too. He’s been a wonderful training partner with me the last two weeks, we played over 20 sets.”

Federer has so far only played two matches since the 2020 Australian Open. He moves into the clay-court season with little match practice. In the next two months, Federer might experiment and get match fit for the grass-court season in June.

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