Christopher Eubanks vows never to repeat ‘hate’ comment after epic Wimbledon win

Christopher Eubanks has vowed never to repeat his comment that he ‘hates’ playing on grass after continuing his ‘dream’ Wimbledon run with an epic five-set victory over Stefanos Tsitsipas.

The American star – who is making his debut at SW19 – put in a career-best performance to defeat Tsitsipas and book his place in his first-ever quarter-final at a Slam.

Eubanks was beaming from ear-to-ear at the end as the victory extended his unbeaten streak on grass to nine matches. The 27-year-old was reminded in his on-court interview that only a few weeks ago he had said he ‘hated’ playing on grass but has since won his first tour title on the surface and now advanced to the quarter-finals at Wimbledon.

“I don’t think I ever will, those words will never come out of my mouth for the rest of my career,” Eubanks said. “The grass and I have had a very strenuous relationship over the years but right now I think it’s my best friend.”

Tsitipas, who had knocked out Britain’s Andy Murray earlier in the tournament, claimed the first set 6-3 but Eubanks answered right back, winning the second on a tie-breaker.

The Greek star showed composure to keep his head and fight back to comfortably win the third 6-3 and leave Eubanks staring at a fourth-round exit.

The American, cheered on by the crowd which included Coco Gauff, grew in confidence and got the fans out of their seats when he took the fourth to take the match to a decider.

Eubanks was picking up momentum now and got an early break to take the ascendency. But Tsitsipas was still battling and managed to get a break back to even things up.

The American is the superior server out of the two and he turned to that to help him over the line as he broke back before holding his next service games to close out the match.

Eubanks said afterwards: “You saw some of those misses [at the end], it was really tough but I consider myself a server and I think servers show that they’re servers in moments like that, whether it’s consolidating a break, serving out sets, serving out matches and although it got a little bit dicey at the end I still could have the confidence to say: ‘I’m a server, I hit serving targets for these moments here and let’s just try and do what I know how to do.”

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