PODCAST - Doubles Special

The ATP Tennis Radio Podcast

WESLEY KOOLHOF ON PROMOTING THE DOUBLES GAME - ‘A bit more Centre Court time would be great if that’s possible. Some tournaments do it actually and it’s always nice for us to play in big arenas, in big stadiums. Scheduling-wise I understand that the singles guys are playing on the big stages, but it would be nice for us to play the first, second or even the quarter-final on the bigger court’.

JOE SALISBURY ON WINNING WHEN NOT PLAYING WELL - ’That’s always one of the things we’ve always said we’ve improved the most as a team in the last four years we’ve been playing together, is that in the tough situations we always find a way, even if we’re not playing out best, or we’re struggling or we feel our opponents are playing better, to win those matches’.

DAVID O’HARE ON LOUIS CAYER - ‘He’s been such an important figure in terms of my tennis knowledge and coaching. He’s dubbed the doubles guru but that does him a little bit of an injustice because he’s fanatical about tennis and his approach is a systematic approach. He’s really special, he’s like a tennis father to me and to be able to sit beside him during matches to pick his brain, ultimately he has a great vision and I try to implement what he says on a daily basis’.

HARRI HELIOVAARA ON THE IMPORTANCE OF CELEBRATING - ‘I’ve always loved competition and competition has the element of winning and losing and of course winning is much better. Now that I’m older I know that it’s not going to last forever, so I’m going to enjoy every moment to the full and when you win matches you made a good job, so why wouldn’t you celebrate’.

LLOYD GLASSPOOL ON THE SPRINGBOARD MOMENT OF GETTING INTO THE ROME MASTERS - ‘Looking back I think it had a massive impact on our year. It was our first real opportunity to play the top, top guys in a tournament that we’d never been in before. That was our first Masters 1000 because of our ranking and just being able to compete in that, we played the world number one and beat the world number one, so it was just a confidence booster and realisation that we could be one of the best teams in the world’.

MARCELO AREVALO ON WINNING ROLAND GARROS - ‘Being the first Salvadorian and Central American player to win a Grand Slam it was a huge success for my country and for my region. I didn’t even know until later that I was the first one, I was just trying to win as many matches as possible and I had my goals clear and one of my main goals in life was to become a Grand Slam champion’.

MICHAEL VENUS ON TRAVEL - ‘Once the pandemic hit I didn’t see my family for six months and then again my wife was pregnant with our second child and I was at home for the birth and then I left two weeks after and I didn’t see her for the first six months after that too, so it got to the point where we needed to see each other as a family, so they started travelling towards the end of last year and they’ve been doing that ever since’.

JOHN NEWCOMBE ON THE LACK OF SINGLES PLAYERS INVOLVED IN THE DOUBLES GAME - ‘When you talk about doubles you bring up something that’s a bit of a sore point with me because it’s just a pity that none of the top players compete in doubles. Ninety percent of players around the world play more doubles than singles. I understand that best of five sets, the top players don’t want to play, but as far as doubles goes I would like to see them having to play more doubles in the regular tournaments where it’s two out of three sets’.

NIKOLA MEKTIC ON LOOKING FORWARD TO A GOOD 2023 - ‘I think mentally we have learned some things this year. The first year we didn’t have many setbacks and this year we had to adapt to some not-so-good results, which I think in the end we pulled through, so I’m very optimistic for the next season’.

-Show presented by Seb Lauzier

-Interviews by Jill Craybas and Chris Bowers