Daniel Evans was losing against Jannik Sinner at the 2023 China Open, and he seemingly mocked the Italian, who complained about an injury.
It was a rather interesting match between Sinner and Evans as the Italian looked completely in control for much of the match. A problem arose in the second part of the second set when Sinner started to complain of an injury.
He's not the most physically imposing player and certainly looks frail at times, and injuries haven't bypassed him so far in his career. Sinner eventually lost the lead in the second set and actually lost the set as well, which wasn't ideal as he was struggling physically.
He even started limping at the start of the 3rd set and called a physio, but Evans wasn't amused as he had momentum on his side. The Brit isn't particularly known as being an unsportsmanlike player but he certainly has a sharp tongue so it's not impossible to imagine that he made what could be described as an inappropriate gesture.
That is what it looked like when cameras caught Evan seemingly mocking Sinner and his limping. The Brit did it towards his own team, so it wasn't directed at Sinner or his team; he was probably just lamenting the fact that his momentum was being cut due to the medical timeout.
Some might not see anything special, some might see a spectacular disrespect. The match did ultimately continue and Sinner did pull out the win so it seems like the momentum was truly affected.
A fair result though because Sinner was about to win before his problems started anyway. After the match, the moment was shared across social media, and it appears that it wasn't the first time that Evans did something similar, as his opponent from the second round of the qualifying from the 2018 Aptos Challenger, Alafia Ayeni, claimed that the Brit treated him the same way five years ago.
"Lol he did this to me too in Aptos Challenger 2018 after I twisted my ankle and couldn’t walk… was up a set and close to winning the second so I tried to play the breaker and he was mocking me (an 18 year old ranked outside the top 1000) pretty much every point of the breaker."
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