{"id":366945,"date":"2026-01-13T01:27:06","date_gmt":"2026-01-13T01:27:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/366945\/"},"modified":"2026-01-13T01:27:06","modified_gmt":"2026-01-13T01:27:06","slug":"australian-open-2026-qualifying-dan-evans-one-of-four-britons-to-lose-in-first-round-in-melbourne-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/366945\/","title":{"rendered":"Australian Open 2026 qualifying: Dan Evans one of four Britons to lose in first round in Melbourne"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Great Britain&#8217;s Dan Evans missed out on the Australian Open main draw for a second successive year as he fell in the first round of qualifying in Melbourne.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The 35-year-old struggled with his serve in a 6-1 6-2 defeat by Japan&#8217;s Rei Sakamoto.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Former British number one Evans recorded four double faults and did not create a single break point in a 66-minute defeat.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Evans&#8217; sole Grand Slam appearance last year was at Wimbledon, where he was given a main draw wildcard.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Fellow Britons Jay Clarke and Jack Pinnington Jones also fell in straight sets in the first round of qualifying, while Oliver Crawford lost 6-3 2-6 6-3 to Spain&#8217;s Daniel Merida Aguilar.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Arthur Fery and George Loffhagen recorded more positive results, with Fery beating Australia&#8217;s Edward Winter 6-2 6-4 and Loffhagen overcoming Germany&#8217;s Justin Engel 7-6 (7-4) 7-6 (7-2).<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Players have to progress through three qualifying rounds to reach the main draw, which begins on Sunday, 18 January.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Great Britain&#8217;s Dan Evans missed out on the Australian Open main draw for a second successive year as&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":366055,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-366945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366945\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/366055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}