Dan Evans, once the rebel without a pause button in some establishment estimates, has been handed not only a chance to help Great Britain into a Davis Cup final for the first time in 37 years but an opportunity to revive his own mercurial career at 25.
Leon Smith’s decision on Thursday to pick Birmingham’s most laid-back athlete ahead of the injured Kyle Edmund, who is 200 places above him in the rankings at 100, and the woefully out-of-form James Ward (141 after losing nine straight) for the semi-final against Australia this weekend is a brave call, catching everyone concerned off guard.
If Evans can beat Bernard Tomic in the second singles on Friday – a meeting of two graduates from the university of unpredictability – and replicate his victory over the Australian at the US Open two years ago, Smith will be a hero. But it is a serious gamble, one decided upon, no doubt, after consultation with the team’s spearhead, Andy Murray.
Evans and Tomic follow the world No3 on to court after he opens the tie against his some-time hitting partner, Thanasi Kokkinakis, so there is at least a chance of a 2-0 lead for Great Britain before the doubles on Saturday when Dominic Inglot and Jamie Murray, who are in excellent form, play Lleyton Hewitt and Sam Groth.
The winners here play either Belgium or Argentina in the final in November.
The story of the tie, though, is Evans, and nobody can be sure that he can carry his excellent summer form into the cauldron of a Davis Cup, even though he has done so in the past. He has won 29 of his past 33 matches away from the glamour of the Tour, so form and fitness are not issues; the challenge is to play Tomic’s lazily struck bombs as he might an obscure opponent in a Futures match in Egypt.
He spoke candidly – his preferred way – about his wandering existence since injury, and his steady recovery since high summer, one interrupted by a phone call from Smith after he had pulled out of a Challenger in Turkey at the weekend.
“My flights were booked and paid for,” Evans said. “I decided on the [Monday] evening I wasn’t going to fly because I had to be up early to get to Luton. That was a bit of a jaunt, and they wouldn’t give me a late start. I was at my sister’s. I woke up on Tuesday and I’d had a missed call, a message [from Smith]. I got on the next flight to Glasgow and I was here.”
Such has been the nomadic existence of this nonchalant, gifted player: a chance call here, a missed phone call there.
Smith has gambled on Evans before when he was languishing in the wilderness, selecting him ahead of Jamie Baker for the tie against Russia in Coventry two years ago despite a ranking of 325, and he delivered by thrashing Evgeny Donskoy, who was 245 places higher than him, in the closing reverse singles. Victory there hauled Great Britain out of the doldrums. So here they are, banking on Evans to help them towards winning the Davis Cup for the first time since 1936 – and that final was against Australia. It was the ninth and last time Great Britain won the goblet and Fred Perry’s farewell gift to the mandarins of British tennis, whom he considered overbearing snobs.
Perry packed his bags soon afterwards and headed for America and the professional game. There is a bit of working-class defiance in Evans, too.
Struck down by injury, Evo, as everyone calls him, returned in January in a $10,000 grasscourt tournament in Egypt. He wasn’t impressed.
“The hotel was fine but the courts were a shambles, shocking. Not a lot of things happened for me on the tennis court. It’s not really tennis. It’s borderline.”
There followed a struggle through a string of minor tournaments as the tendinitis in his left knee slowly eased, but he still was on the outside looking in, and had to get a wildcard for the qualification tournament at Wimbledon, falling one win short.
“It was a choice to have an operation but I didn’t want to go down that route. It’s manageable. It’s not very pretty playing in Egypt or Wimbledon wildcard qualies. I’d like to think I’m better than a lot of people playing there. It’s not easy. I’ve come through stronger for that.”
He had to watch Great Britain’s win over the United States here in March on television, and recalled, “It was amazing watching it, Wardy beating [John]
Isner. Actually, it wasn’t nice to watch it, although I was happy for him.
Everyone who competes wants that to be them.”
Everything comes unvarnished with Evans. It is one of the qualities Smith recognises and admires in him. He picked him because he trusts his talent and his big-match temperament.
“It wasn’t an easy decision,” the captain said.
“Dan has played an awful lot of tennis this summer, won a lot of matches, mostly at Futures level, where winning really helps in terms of confidence.
Kyle, although he was almost fit, still had a fall the other day. It wasn’t worth risking anything happening over the weekend, especially when you go in with two singles players and two doubles players. If anything should have happened to Kyle on the Friday, we would have been up against it. For James, it came at maybe at the wrong time after a tough summer.”
Tomic, meanwhile, expects this match to be as difficult as their last meeting, when Evans was in the form of his life at the US Open. “We were all surprised,” Tomic said. “Obviously they picked him [because] he did beat me in the US. I was up 6-1 and 3-0, and I couldn’t make a ball after that. That’s all I remember.
“It was a very, very windy day, he was very tough and very confident, he’d beaten Kei Nishikori prior to playing me, so he was obviously playing well.I had a chance. I was comfortable and cruising, he started playing more free and he beat me. So it’s not an easy match – it’s tough for me.”
