The chemistry between doubles players is like finding lightning in a bottle
Finding a doubles partner for Grand Slam tennis requires connections, patience, persistence and a good smartphone data plan.
Ottawa’s Gabriela Dabrowski won a French Open mixed doubles championship with India’s Rohan Bopanna last June, and they played together at Wimbledon in July and the U.S. Open in September, losing in the quarter-finals both times.
Little wonder, then, that Dabrowski was blindsided when she learned Bopanna had decided to play in the Australian Open in January with Hungary’s Timea Babos, the Canadian’s partner in the 2010 junior women’s doubles final in Melbourne.
Double ouch.
Here, though, was where tennis connections made a huge difference.
Dabrowski contacted Scott Davidoff, a U.S. coach she has worked with occasionally and whose clients also included Bopanna and China’s Yifan Xu, Dabrowski’s women’s doubles partner.
According to Dabrowski, Davidoff was unaware she needed a new mixed doubles partner until he received her text message.
“I asked him for the phone numbers of basically the top 20 guys in doubles who generally play on the deuce side because I predominantly play on the ad side,” Dabrowski said in a tennis-speak description of players who start points on the right and left sides of the court. “I figured I would exhaust all my options on the people who play on the deuce side, so I messaged some people. I got some responses back. Some probably didn’t deliver.
“And then I asked Mate Pavic, and he responded pretty quickly, and he said, ‘No, I don’t have a partner. Do you want to play?’ So we played.”
Did they ever. Dabrowski and Pavic won five matches at Melbourne Park, capped by a third-set tiebreaker victory against Babos and Bopanna in the final. They split $175,000 Aus and banked fistfuls of world ranking points.
Dabrowski, who with Xu had won the women’s doubles in the Sydney International tune-up event and reached the Open quarter-finals, left Australia at No. 11 on the Women’s Tennis Association
Tour in doubles. She later climbed to seventh before settling back to 11th as of this past week.
Pavic and Austria’s Oliver Marach added the Australian Open men’s doubles crown to those from earlier tour events in Qatar and New Zealand. Thus the Croatian moved up to No. 5 in Association of Tennis Professionals Tour doubles and, since boosted by two more appearances in finals, he’s now No. 1 in the world.
Those numbers matter as Grand Slam doubles titles matter on a resumé: They catch people’s attention, so perhaps they’ll look favourably on a request to play next time in Paris, Wimbledon, New York or Melbourne.
Before you wonder, Dabrowski and Pavic are indeed scheduled to join forces in the bid for a second consecutive Grand Slam title at Stade Roland Garros, where the French Open begins Sunday.
A match of a different kind brought Dabrowski and Xu together.
Dabrowski had agreed to play doubles with Michaëlla Krajicek, but the Dane fell ill and a subsequent knee injury required surgery, essentially ending her 2017 season, so Dabrowski struck up a last-minute partnership with Britain’s Heather Watson for a tournament at Indian Wells, Calif.
The brand-new duo lost in the first round, but, coincidentally, Xu was also seeking a partner, so she and Dabrowski signed up to play two weeks later in Miami. They won, and they’ve since played together in more than 20 tournaments.
In between, though, Dabrowski has also played three times with Latvia’s Julia Ostapenko, producing a title in Qatar, once each on tour with American Alison Riske, Ukraine’s Kateryna Bondarenko and Olga Savchuk and Australia’s Ellen Perez and once for Canada in Fed Cup team action with Bianca Andreescu of Mississauga, Ont.
Jill Hultquist (formerly Jill Hetherington), a Canadian tennis great who reached No. 6 in WTA doubles in 1989, said there would be long-term benefit from forming a stable tennis partnership.
“Just finding a consistent partner is, I think, really the key to (Dabrowski’s) success really continuing. Each week, if you’re changing partner to partner, it’s really hard to to get to know your partner and the ins and outs of what they do.”
Dabrowski concurred. It sounds as if she thinks there would be less angst, too.
“When you know both of your strengths and weaknesses, you know you can try to play to your strengths,” the 26-year-old said.