In athletics (running and jumping and throwing) the "points" are largely real-world things, like inches and seconds (or fractions thereof). Athletics is mostly human against nature, and the fact that several humans are having the battle at the same time is only of passing interest.

I am supportive of Dan, I think given his upbringing and relative age, and his recent past, maximising his points and ranking is an understandable priority. Tokyo isnt just the week, it will impact both sides with travel etc, so 3 or 4 weeks would be disrupted possibly. One commentator said that the two events it directly clashes with (Atlanta and Los Cabos I think) would be weakened and as such players like Dan would see them as real opportunities for decent points, money and maybe a title.

BUT, the other side is that Dan won't get the chance for an Olympics again, I would think, and I think he would really regret not having experienced it. I dont know when the cut off for entries is, maybe the answer is to really crack on over the next month or three and get points and money galore, and then feel more free to give the Olympics a go!

ROSAMUND wrote:

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This is a  bye gone era but for some reason or other and she was qualified to do so in both 1988 and 1992  but Jo Durie chose not to go to the Olympics. Unlike Dan Evans who got some comment  in the  papers  no comment or criticism was ever made about Jo Durie's reasons for not playing. And it can't have been the travel because the 1992 Olympics were held in Barcelona.  

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 I think back then tennis in the Olympics was still a fledgling thing and, if I am correct, in 1988 it was just an exhibition sport ie no official medals. 1992 it got serious for the first time but LOTS of players missed it. It was on clay, hardly Jo Durie's strongest surface and one good reason not too play. But lots of other top players didnt take part - Marc Rosset won the mens singles if I recall and hardly any big names went deep into the event. 1996 was when tennis first got more serious at Atlanta when Agassi won it.   

JonH comes home wrote:

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ROSAMUND wrote:

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This is a  bye gone era but for some reason or other and she was qualified to do so in both 1988 and 1992  but Jo Durie chose not to go to the Olympics. Unlike Dan Evans who got some comment  in the  papers  no comment or criticism was ever made about Jo Durie's reasons for not playing. And it can't have been the travel because the 1992 Olympics were held in Barcelona.  

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 I think back then tennis in the Olympics was still a fledgling thing and, if I am correct, in 1988 it was just an exhibition sport ie no official medals. 1992 it got serious for the first time but LOTS of players missed it. It was on clay, hardly Jo Durie's strongest surface and one good reason not too play. But lots of other top players didnt take part - Marc Rosset won the mens singles if I recall and hardly any big names went deep into the event. 1996 was when tennis first got more serious at Atlanta when Agassi won it.   

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 In  1988  tennis became an official  Olympic sport. You might remember  Steffi Graf  won  the gold medal and   completed the Golden Slam, a feat that is yet to be repeated and may never happen again.I think  at  the Seoul Olympics tennis was played on hard courts. Jo Durie's strongest surface may not have been clay but she was  once a semi finalist in Paris. Most of the women have taken the Olympics seriously with the likes of Graf, Capriati, Davenport, Venus Williams, Henin and Serena Williams  winning the singles Gold Medal.

Dan is 3rd or 4th alt in Dubai doubles paired with krajinovic

JonH comes home wrote:

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Interestingly, tennis abstract rated evos win in Dubai qf as his career best performance, top elo rating.

He is up to 23rd on their elo ratings now, kyle is 24th.

tennisabstract.com/reports/atp_elo_ratings.html

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Seems fair enough given Rublev's form and his own Elo rating of #7. 

Interesting that Kyle is so high on a rating system taking such account of who you play 

Been a very encouraging start to the year from both Dan and Kyle. 

There was an interesting feature on Dan by John Westerby in Monday's Times (behind a paywall) which was part interview/part assessment of where he stands at the moment.  Some choice extracts:

"As you go along, you gradually find your game, you find what works for you," Evans said. "It would have been nice to have done it a bit earlier in life, but that's how it goes sometimes. Everyone finds it at different points. I found my way in the end."

He will not, he is keen to stress, be content with a top-30 ranking gained through his victories this year over David Goffin and Alex de Minaur at the ATP Cup, Karen Khachanov in Rotterdam, then Fabio Fognini and Andrey Rublev in Dubai. "It's a good achievement, but hopefully I can go higher," he said. "It's a poor trait in British tennis to be happy with top 100, or top 30, or whatever it might be. It's good that there's me and Kyle [Edmund, now ranked 44], who's been very high, and obviously Andy [Murray], and I hope younger players are wanting to get up there. You never know what you can do if you keep striving.2

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[...] 

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But he returned to tennis [after the drug ban - an event not dwelt on, but used as a hook on which to hang an explanation of Dan's comeback] with his focus narrowed, his love for the game intact and a desire to simplify his life in keeping tennis as a priority. Take, for example, the decision to stay away from social media. "With what's happened, I just never wanted to go back," he said. "I was on there for a long time and it's just disasters all over. It's difficult not to bite at the idiots on there."

.....

Watching Evans is anything but dull. He is playing with a relish that endears him to the audience, with a twinkle in his eye. Would moving further up the rankings change his life a great deal? "No way, not for me," he says, adamantly. "I'm settled living in Cheltenham and I'll stay there now. I've got a great girlfriend [Aleah], she travels with me most weeks and my dad's around a lot too. I don't need much else in my life.