‘Be very careful, Kyle. Be very careful mate,’ Dan Evans tells Kyle Edmund after his racket gets ‘teed’

Dan Evans

Dan Evans and Kyle Edmund added some spice to the Battle of the Brits Tennis Team event at Roehampton with the former getting touchy after Edmund “teed his racket”.

British No 1 Evans gave Judy Murray and Greg Rusedski’s Union Jacks victory on day two in south-west London as he claimed a clinical 6-4, 6-4 win over Edmund.

But things got heated at the end of the match when they touched rackets at the nets, which has replaced the traditional handshake during the coronavirus pandemic.

Edmund’s racket tapping technique was a little too aggressive for Evans and he told his rival: “Be very careful, Kyle. Be very careful mate.”

When he returned to his box, his team-mate Heather Watson suggested Edmund was joking, but Evans was having none of it and said: “He just teed my racket.”

Edmund, though, did play down the incident.

“It was nothing. He said he misinterpreted touching the rackets and stuff,” he said. “There was nothing there. The racket touch is not that a big a deal to be honest.”

However, the world No 44 insists that there is plenty of competitiveness due to the team element aspect.

“12pm yesterday, that was when we started caring about the end result,” he added. “Every match has been like that in terms of competitiveness.

“It is not like you are just going to play to get the practice, you are playing to try and win. When you add a team element, there is a natural feeling inside that takes away just playing to playing with a team, it is like an extra responsibility.”

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