Tennis: Doubles Delights

Doubles tennis doesn’t get the credit it deserves, at least on the broadcast media, in today’s obsession with the singles specialists. It wasn’t always so. As a teenager, I’d look forward to watching live coverage of the pairs at Wimbledon rat-a-tatting volleys in lengthening shadows after tea and homework, even more so than the big-money duels taking place earlier in the day.

In 2019, it would appear that doubles, whether men’s, women’s or mixed, only got a look-in if at least one of the participants was a Murray or someone else with a Union Flag appended to their name. I became heartily sick of the whole Serandy - or is it Andena? - partnership farrago, when there are so many other brilliant pairs in action. It’s not just about the relegation of competition which doesn’t involve loads of zeroes in the prize pot. After all, the winners of the men’s and women’s events get to share more than half a million quid. Not in the Singles stratosphere, but hardly a bag of peanuts.

Anyone who has played tennis will have enjoyed doubles for the social value. By and large I found it fun to play with and against different partners in my tennis club or amongst friends, although in terms of competitive club matches I tended to prefer singles, as I felt responsible for my own destiny and I couldn’t muck it up for anybody else. However, it was good to mix it up a bit, and there’s nothing more satisfying than standing at the net to punch away a point-winning volley!

The current professional tours see little of the old-school blending of formats. Outside the Davis or Fed Cups, the Olympics or a few exhibition matches, I don’t know when the likes of Federer, Nadal or Djokovic last played competitive doubles. It’s simply not worth their while. That leaves some of the less familiar names to dominate the separate doubles tournaments, and I’m sure I’m not alone in trying to put those names to faces each summer at Wimbledon. It doesn’t help when, as already stated, even the TV cameras at SW19 swerve to avoid them.

Back in the day, the top singles players tended to be doubles winners, too, but they seemed to play with a sense of fun. With precious little money to play for, I guess such clashes would inevitably revolve around honour and enjoyment. Furthermore, when John Newcombe and Tony Roche met, say, Rod Laver and Roy Emerson across the net, it must have felt like one of those Saturday afternoon knockabouts, even if a Grand Slam title was at stake.

I think Newcombe and Roche won about a dozen Grand Slams together and several more with separate partners. Up to the late Seventies they were more important to my Wimbledon viewing than the likes of Connors, Borg or Nastase but they were not alone. That midsummer fortnight also brought us the white cap of Frew McMillan in partnership with Bob Hewitt, not to mention Billie-Jean King and Rosie Casals bringing an always watchable blend of touch and power to women’s doubles.

The Aussie production line was maintained through Case and Masters, McNamara and McNamee then in the Nineties by the incomparable ‘Woodies’, Mark Woodforde and Todd Woodbridge. They were the classic combination of left- and right-handers and, thanks to their bright demeanours, brought a sense of entertainment beyond mere tennis skills. I never picked up the same happy vibe when the American Bryan brothers were grabbing eighteen Grand Slams between 2003 and 2014. They represent a completely different era, the one where partners feel obliged to ‘finger-slide’ (not even a fist-bump!) each other after every point, won or lost, and conduct all their tactical conversations behind the shield of a ball It all seems so – well – professional, but of course that’s because doubles is a serious business.

There were many other enduring American partnerships to savour in my formative years. Smith and Lutz, Gottfried and Ramirez, Flach and Seguso, Navratilova and Shriver all flew the Stars and Stripes with great aplomb for many years, although my favourite duo has to be John McEnroe and Peter Fleming. When once asked who was the best doubles pairing, Fleming repled: “McEnroe and anyone”. If Mac was a superb singles player, he was even better at doubles, so devastating was his knowledge of angles and touch on the volley. A true genius.

McEnroe’s contemporary and fellow leftie Martina Navratilova was another supreme doubles player, whether paired with King, Evert, Stove, Mandlikova or Shriver, while Jonas Bjorkman was the best and most enduring of a string of Swedish doubles stars. Jana Novotna was another whose game was tailor-made for doubles, and she scooped sixteen women’s or mixed Grand Slams in her stellar career.

However, even Jana was outdone in the Nineties by Natasha Zvereva. A product of the Soviet Union, I used to support her partnership with Ludmila Savchenko, partly because the USSR was, despite the arrival of Gorbachev, glasnost and perestroika, still supposed to be our enemy. They made an unlikely pairing but were brilliant to watch. Their match-up didn’t survive the Soviet break-up, but it was Zvereva who, alongside Gigi Fernandez, won nine out of ten consecutive Grand Slam titles in 1992-94.  I don’t know why, but the Belarussian is possibly my fave women’s doubles player of all time.

She must be pushed hard by Martina Hingis. In her first, teenage, incarnation around the turn of the millennium, she claimed doubles titles with six different partners then, after her comeback, formed a formidable pairing with Sania Mirza. Neither were muscular powerhouses but were so aesthetically pleasing to watch. What is it about Indians and doubles? Vijay and Anand Amritraj introduced some Asian elegance in the Seventies while in the new century, Leander Paes – like Savchenko-Neiland not blessed with the standard tennis player physique - has proved one of the finest on the circuit and the go-to partner for any title-hungry female. His ten mixed doubles Grand Slam trophies span sixteen years and counting. He won three with Hingis in 2011 alone when pushing forty but it is his successes with the 47 year-old Navratilova in Melbourne and Wimbledon in 2003 for which he may be most fondly remembered.

Excluding the comedy senior matches involving Mansour Bahrami and Henri Leconte, there is one game which above all others epitomised everything I once enjoyed about mixed doubles in the Seventies - and yet it happened in 2007. I’m talking about the summer when the scratch pairing of Jamie Murray and Jelena Jankovic somehow harnessed their engaging bonhomie to not only reach the Wimbledon final but to actually win the title. It was such a throwback to a different era. They were having fun, and it was infectious; sport at its most life-affirming.