Salisbury clinches first major and looks forward to Olympics
Britain’s leading doubles player, Joe Salisbury, may finally be able to move out of the Peckham flat that he shares with his sister and her boyfriend. “Yeah, looking to buy a place sometime this year,” said a buoyant Salisbury yesterday, after collecting A$380,000 (£192,000) as a first-time grand-slam champion.
Salisbury produced a near-perfect performance as he and his American partner Rajeev Ram blitzed the Australian wild cards
Luke Saville and Max Purcell 6-4, 6-2 in a one-sided Australian Open final. “Joe doesn’t show it outwardly,” said Ram, “but he’s incredibly competitive. His ability to rise to the occasion is pretty special, and he’s an incredible athlete, too.”
Salisbury’s success, like Ernest Hemingway’s bankruptcy, has arrived in two ways: gradually and then suddenly. When he graduated from the University of Memphis five years ago, nobody would have spotted him as a grand-slam winner. He was still trying to make it in singles, but high training loads left
him struggling with glandular fever and other forms of chronic fatigue.
In the summer of 2016, Salisbury went to a Futures event in Portugal and got hammered by a local wild card ranked No1,142. Enough was enough. He reinvented himself as a doubles specialist and within two years he was playing in a Wimbledon semi-final. “It shows even if you’re not one of the top juniors winning all the junior grand slams or breaking through when you’re 19, 20, that you can still have a good career,” said Salisbury, who will turn 28 in April. “It should give a lot of belief to other players that if you keep working at it and you have the right support, you can do it.”
Much of that support came from his parents, who had to fund his travel, subsistence and coaching for two or three seasons. “There were times where I questioned whether I should keep going,” he said. “But if there was a chance I could make a career, that’s what I wanted.”
In Australia over the last month, Carolyn Salisbury has been travelling alongside her son. “She’s mostly calming,” said Joe when asked about his mother’s influence,
before admitting – with a touch of embarrassment – that she has also been doing his laundry. Salisbury and Ram came into 2020 with two main targets: to win a grand slam (check) and to finish the year as the world’s top partnership. Yesterday’s victory bumped them up the tightly bunched rankings, into fourth and fifth places respectively. In yesterday’s final, Salisbury barely missed a shot. He is 6ft 3in and “in unbelievable shape” – in the words of Dan Evans. And he is the stunt man
in the team, the one who supplies most of the acrobatic moves. Ram concentrates on serving strongly and locking down his side of the court with reliable groundstrokes.
Salisbury is only the third British man since Roger Taylor (who won the 1971 and 1972 US Opens) to land a major doubles title (the others being Jamie Murray and Jonny Marray). According to Louis Cayer, the coaching genius who has overseen Britain’s doubles boom: “He’s improved a lot. He’s developing what you call the performer side, which is to stay in the present – no
frustration or anger, no anxiety or stress. I think what Joe has learned is to deal much better with things.”
One side-effect of yesterday’s victory is that – barring injury or an unlikely slump – Salisbury should be able to qualify automatically for the Tokyo Olympics via a top-10 ranking. The rules state that he would be able to choose his partner. And with Jamie Murray established in partnership with Neal Skupski, Andy Murray might be the next logical option.
“If he is fit,” said Salisbury, “that is something I would love to do.”