A hybrid method that combines the iterative Fourier transform (IFT) and the algorithm of differential evolution (DE) is proposed to address the synthesis of low sidelobe sparse linear array (SLA) including many elements. Firstly, a thinned linear array (TLA) with the lattices spaced at half wavelength is obtained by the IFT. Then, for the elements of the TLA whose left or right spacing are greater than half wavelength, their placements are selected as the candidates which will be further optimized by the DE, as long as the interelement spacing is not less than half wavelength. Consequently, the convergence pressure of DE is greatly alleviated for the reason that the selected elements only accounts for a small part of the total. Therefore, the SLA with improved sidelobe performance can be obtained at relative low hardware cost. Several numerical instances confirmed the effectiveness of the proposed method.