Dan Evans will get one last shot at Wimbledon, but only in doubles. The All England Club said on Tuesday that Evans had been awarded a doubles wild card for the tournament, leaving him without a singles place for what he has already said will be his final grass-court season.
The decision matters because Evans, 36, is trying to shape his farewell around the one stretch of the calendar that has defined so much of his career. He will team up with Henry Searle, the 20-year-old who was world No. 354, after the pair worked together informally during Searle’s rehabilitation from injury. For Evans, it is a late change of lane rather than the clean send-off a home player might have hoped for.
That is why Wimbledon was being watched so closely. Evans has barely played for 10 months because of injury, lost to Daniel Jade in French Open qualifying last month and also failed to qualify for the Ilkley Challenger and the HSBC Championships. He reached a career-high ranking of world No. 21 in 2023, but his current form and recent results have left him fighting for any route into the Grand Slam he knows best.
His frustration was already clear at Queen’s, the prestigious Wimbledon warmup in west London, where he said it would have been a classy gesture to hand him a wild card. The All England Club did not do that, and on Tuesday it also passed over a singles wild card for Wimbledon even as it found room for him in the doubles draw. That split matters. Singles wild cards are scarce and usually reflect either current standing or a broader event need, while doubles entries are handled separately and can be used to add experience, interest or a local storyline.
Evans has not hidden what he thinks should happen next in British tennis, either. In an interview published by The Tennis Podcast on Wednesday, he argued that too many British players are not reaching the top 100 and said the country’s coaching has not been going in the right direction for a few years. He added that coaching can be more attractive elsewhere because of money, and said there are things he has learned that could help when he eventually coaches himself. He also said, plainly, that getting to the top 100 is not complicated.
There is a sharp edge to that view. As an 18-year-old, Evans had his funding removed by the LTA after going out drinking the night before playing in the Wimbledon boys’ doubles event, a reminder that his path through the sport has never been neat or protected. He was part of the British Davis Cup-winning team in 2015, reached a peak level that few British men have matched in recent years and now faces the end of his playing career with one final Wimbledon appearance, but not the one he wanted most.
That leaves the tournament’s next question in simple form: what does Wimbledon make of Evans now? For this year, the answer is doubles and Henry Searle. For everything else, the door is closed.
