Dan Evans fights back from two sets down to beat Mackenzie McDonald at Australian Open

In his first match as a seeded player at a slam, Dan Evans fought back from a two-set deficit to oust 24-year-old Californian Mackenzie McDonald in a draining 3hr 21min epic.

After such a show of stamina and determination, Evans might be tempted to send Tim Henman – who had suggested last week that he needed “to miss a few meals” – a few text messages about his own physical conditioning.

At the end of the match, he made a big show of patting his tummy and then told Eurosport that he wanted people to see that he is fit enough.

Evans’s 3-6, 4-6, 6-1, 6-2, 6-3 victory represented the first time he had won a five-set match at a major, and the first time in his career he had fought back from two sets down.

Evans had admitted before the tournament that he expected to feel an extra sliver of expectation because of his career-best ranking of No 33 in the world. And this probably explains why he made such a slow start on Monday morning against a man who has barely played in the last nine months because of a hamstring injury.

Evans’s mood in the early stages was nervy and fractious. Towards the end of the first set, he miscued a forehand so badly that it sailed out of the court and into the stands, leaving him 5-1 down. Evans screamed to himself: "Get hold of it. Relax a bit. Settle down a bit. F---ing do something."

This burst of self-admonishment triggered an immediate improvement, as Evans broke McDonald’s serve for the first time. But he was still struggling to make a sustained impact. Towards the end of the second set, he began barking repeatedly in the direction of his support team, as if he still wanted the kind of personal interaction that Henman – the British team captain – gave him at the recent ATP Cup in Sydney.

But McDonald’s lack of recent matchplay may help to explain why his level dropped dramatically at the start of the third set. Evans pounced, and you can see the transformation in his numbers. Over the first two sets, he hit 15 winners and 24 unforced errors. Over the last three, the equivalent tallies were 39 and 19.

Another telling statistic is that Evans only came to the net five times in the first set, while his nerves appeared to be at their most intense. As he had told reporters before the tournament, “I need to put my game on the court and I can win. Probably a few matches last year I didn’t do that. I didn’t take small opportunities to come into the net.”

As with Henman – whose jibe does not seem to have affected the friendship between the two men – Evans’s strength lies in his silky volleying. Once he had taken control of the match early in the third set, and begun coming forward at every opportunity, McDonald had no real answer. Evans’s reward will be a second-round meeting with Yoshihito Nishioka – the world No 72 from Japan – on Wednesday.