The swirling, italic tattoo on the inside of Dan Evans’s left forearm proclaiming ‘Every saint has a past, every sinner has as future’ has a particular resonance for a young man who is working his way from one extreme to the other.

The 21-year-old from Hall Green might not make it all the way to canonisation – his on court language is a tad too industrial for your average religious leader – yet even those rough edges should not be allowed to obscure what has been a genuine act clean up.

The British No. 4 demonstrated as much during his short-lived return to Wimbledon this week where he went slug-for-slug with the 20th seed Florian Mayer and not only took a set off the highly-rated German – but might have had even more.

For once the scoreline, 6-7 (5), 6-7 (1), 6-3, 6-4 in Mayer’s favour probably did tell most of the story, at least hinting at two very close sets and two others which were sealed by the odd break.

What it didn’t reveal though was the closeness of the exchanges nor the fact that Evans could quite easily have come out on top.

The first set tie-break was nip and tuck, he served for the second at 5-3, won the third and was 4-4 in the fourth before it suddenly slipped away.

He was left to reflect on what might have been but unlike his previous effort at the All England Club, when in 2009 he let a comatosed Nikolay Davydenko slip past him, things are clearly moving in the right direction.

A slight over-reliance on the F-word apart, all under his breath and directed at himself it should be said, Evans’ attitude was excellent and only bettered by his tennis.

The forehand has more of a kick to it, the backhand slice fizzes over the net and his first serve is very penetrative.

Under the guidance of Leighton Alfred at the Nottingham tennis academy he appears to have harnessed his undoubted talent.

“I am not going backwards at the moment. There are good things and I wasn’t surprised with the way I played against Mayer because I am playing well,” Evans said.

Not quite well enough to topple the top-ranked performers, though. He let Mayer off the hook, just as he had Grigor Dimitrov at Eastbourne a week earlier.

“I don’t know what the difference is,” he admitted. “I guess that’s for me to work out and work on. There are a lot of positives but really I should serve that set out and settle a men’s game. I think 99.9 per cent of players probably would have done that.”

It is the sort of self-challenging attitude that will serve him well and possibly send his compatriots, James Ward and Dan Cox – who like Evans all made the main draw only after being handed a wild card – scurrying for cover.

Near-misses are not the currency in which Evans wants to deal – and nor should his counterparts in their unlikely pursuit of Andy Murray at the top of the domestic game.

Even Ward’s slightly surreal progress to the last four of the pre-Wimbledon warm-up event at Queen’s doesn’t cut it.

“It is one week in tennis then the next week he is just going to be exactly the same as me, doing what I am doing.

“For the rest of the year I don’t know what he did, I am guessing nothing as he was still ranked exactly the same as before.

“None of us have come out and stepped forward or done it on a yearly basis.

“Coxy has done really well but no-one has won a Challenger. Semis of Queen’s is good but one tournament doesn’t make it. It’s on a 12 month basis, Someone needs to put their neck out and be called upon.”

And the signs are that someone might turn out to be a reformed sinner. “I did a few things, I guessed I fancied reminding myself of that.”