Dan Evans remains convinced he will never fall in love with clay but, for the first half of his losing match against Tommy Robredo in draining heat over four sets on the first day of the 2017 French Open, his aversion to the dirt looked to be a grand bluff.

The elegant Birmingham strokemaker might never master the surface that so bothers those brought up on grass or hard courts yet, before his stamina leaked and stomach cramps kicked in, he mixed selective power and teasing touches of the highest class to raise hopes of what he, at least, would have regarded as an upset.

He later put his early burst down to a dip in his opponent’s level. “I think he just didn’t find his feet at the start, and then it was clear he was way better than me on that surface and looked physically better as well, which was a bit worrying.”

That seemed a harsh self-judgment. Mats Wilander, who won three of his seven slams here, certainly thinks so. “It’s not that he cannot play on clay, but can he win on it?” the former world No1 said. “He has the game. He was great for an hour and a half.”

Nevertheless, it was evident Evans was fighting his own game as much as Robredo’s and had nothing left when his 10th double fault handed the Spanish veteran the match after two hours and 27 minutes. Robredo won 5-7, 6-4, 6-3, 6-1 and next plays the No11 seed, Grigor Dimitrov, who saw off Stéphane Robert in three sets.

It is 11 years since Robredo was No6 in the world and, at 35, he languishes at 271 halfway through a poor season, but he had won 36 of 49 matches here over 16 years and has been a quarter-finalist five times, most recently in 2013.

It has taken some of the game’s best players to stop him: Roger Federer, Albert Costa, Nikolay Davydenko, Juan Martín del Potro and David Ferrer. Evans should not be so hard on himself.

The conditions on Sunday were tough enough to force the Russian Daniil Medvedev to quit with cramp on the same court earlier, with the French wildcard Benjamin Bonzi up 5-7, 6-4, 6-1, 3-1.

Yet Evans – who admitted later he had eaten too close to the start of the match because he did not imagine Medvedev-Bonzi would finish so quickly – brought encouraging clay form to Paris, having won a couple of matches in Barcelona, as well as taking the world No9, Dominic Thiem, to a tie-break there. On Court 2 here, he lost just one first serve to take the first set.

His trainer, Mark Hilton, looked concerned when Evans left the court with stomach pains that forced him to be sick during the break. He returned to break Robredo at the start of the second set with an unreachable backhand into the deuce corner, but tiredness steadily crowded out his focus, if not his resolve. He double-faulted, then surrendered the second set when he stabbed a final volley long. A time violation did nothing for his mood.

He went 0-3 down in the third and dropped his hands on his knees when Robredo stuck a dazzling single-handed backhand past him, the last of 13 shots in the longest rally of the match. Evans held. Just. Pain racked his face but he fought to deuce, got break point and was palpably relieved when Robredo hit wide. They exchanged breaks as Evans looked to be getting a second wind, but the Spaniard toughed it out to go a set up and finished the job as a matador would with a wounded bull.

Andy Murray has not looked much like the world No1 in practice but got into a more encouraging rhythm at the nearby Jean-Bouin Stadium on Sunday, before his first-round match against the world No85 Alexander Kuznetsov on Tuesday. Murray will not know until he is in the tougher exchanges whether the cold he picked up a week ago has left his system entirely.