Chris Eaton

Christopher Philip Eaton (born 27 November 1987) is a British retired tennis player. He reached his career-high singles ranking of World No. 317 in June 2009, and his career-high doubles ranking of World No. 147 in May 2011. Eaton is currently the assistant coach at Wake Forest University.

In February 2009, Eaton played what was then the longest tennis match in history, lasting 6 hours and 40 minutes, eventually beating James Ward 21–19 in the fifth set. This was a playoff match to decide the Davis Cup team, but it was not sanctioned by the ATP, so it was not an official record and was later broken.

Early and personal life He learned to play tennis at Reed's School. He was nicknamed the "Eaton Rifle" due to his big serve.

From age 8 to 16, he was coached by Justin Sherring.

Junior career Eaton reached a career high of No. 97 in April 2005 at age 17. In his only singles main draw junior grand slam match, and his final match as a junior, he lost to Donald Young at Wimbledon in 2005, 1–6, 5–7.

Senior career 2007 Eaton's best results in 2007 were two Futures doubles championships in Israel and Great Britain, and a singles semifinal appearance at Israel F4 in November, where he beat No. 839 Amir Hadad. He finished 2007 ranked No. 656 in singles.

2008

Eaton made little singles progress in the first 4 months of the year. However, he had much success in doubles, making the doubles finals of 5 Futures and winning two of them.

In June, he had a breakthrough singles win in the 2nd round of qualifying at Nottingham, beating his first top-100 opponent, No. 90 Guillermo García López, before losing to No. 111 Vince Spadea in the final qualifying round. He followed that up the next week as a wild card by qualifying in singles for the Wimbledon Championships, beating No. 140 Mikhail Kukushkin, No. 206 Jan Minář, and No. 162 Olivier Patience, scoring 32 aces in that match. He was also given a wild card into the main doubles draw with Alexander Slabinsky.

In the Wimbledon Championships first round he beat Serbia's Boris Pasanski 6–3 7–6(8–6) 6–4. He then faced Russia's Dmitry Tursunov, the number 25 seed in the second round on Court One, his first show-court appearance. However, he could not continue his winning streak and Eaton lost 6–7(2), 2–6, 4–6. As a result of his performance at Wimbledon, Eaton's ranking rose to a career high of 386. This made him eligible for Challenger events.

2009

Having played little more than a few Futures at the start of the year, Eaton was thrust into play-offs, between six British tennis hopefuls, designed by John Lloyd to help pick the two singles players to represent Great Britain in the Euro/Africa Zone Group I tie against Ukraine.

Eaton started well, defeating Alexander Slabinsky 6–4 6–4 2–6 7–6 (7–5). He then beat James Ward 6–3 6–2 6–7 (3–7) 2–6 21–19 in a gruelling match lasting six hours and 40 minutes, to achieve his best Slam result with a third round appearance.

Eaton began playing touchtennis as a pastime against other former professional tennis players as well as current park players and rank amateurs. He has won one title and hosted a weekly tennis phone in show on the sports website.

Eaton played his last match in the 2012 Wimbledon qualifying second round. He joined the Wake Forest men's tennis staff as an assistant coach in the 2016–17 season.

He coaches doubles player Henri Kontinen.

ATP Challenger and ITF Futures finals Singles: 4 (3–1) LegendATP Challenger (0–0)ITF Futures (3–1)Finals by surfaceHard (2–0)Clay (0–0)Grass (0–0)Carpet (1–1)

Doubles: 38 (23–15) LegendATP Challenger (1–1)ITF Futures (22–14)Finals by surfaceHard (23–10)Clay (0–0)Grass (2–3)Carpet (1–2)