| Friday, 4 July 2008 Written by Chris Bowers The mixed doubles is often the forgotten main draw competition at Grand Slams. It is the only one that isn’t played on the tour, so it has an element of uncertainty, with no regular partnerships and different motivations among the participants. So how do players go about picking their partners? And is there ever an element of romance – real or hoped-for – in the choice of a mixed doubles partner? That was certainly the impression left at Wimbledon last year when Jamie Murray and Jelena Jankovic won the mixed doubles title. Amid the joy among the home nation at winning its first main draw title for 20 years (the previous one had been in the mixed doubles, too), the flirtatious friendship between Murray and Jankovic led some to believe a personal relationship had been born somewhere between baseline and service line. Asked about it several months later, Murray said: “Yeah, a lot of people thought we were [romantically involved].” But it was a purely professional relationship. Since then, Murray has played mixed doubles with only one partner, and it’s not Jankovic. While Jankovic has pursued her singles career, Murray has teamed up with the world No. 1 women’s doubles player Liezel Huber with considerable success though no titles to date. Joining up with Huber is a coup for Murray. Needless to say, top doubles stars seldom lack offers to play doubles. But how do players go about getting a partner? “I always looked for a woman who either had a big serve or a solid return,” says the seven-time mixed doubles champion Todd Woodbridge, who won all four major titles in his career. “The feeling in the men’s locker room is that mixed doubles is decided by the strength of the woman, so I either needed a woman who could hold her serve regularly or return well enough that we could break either of our opponents’ serve.” Serena Williams, who won here 10 years ago with Max Mirnyi, says the women look as much for compatibility of personalities as for a good game. “We just look for people that we feel we would get along with, both on and off the court,” she says, “because it’s important in doubles to have a great dynamic with that person. Then I always look for someone who has a big serve so I don’t have to work so hard.” Another mixed champion, Heinz Gündthart, said: “It depends on whether you’re primarily a singles or doubles player. A doubles player will view mixed doubles as a chance for more titles or prize money so will choose a partner they can win with, whereas a singles player is probably into mixed for a bit of fun so can afford to have wider criteria in the choice of partner.” So has anyone ever teamed up in mixed doubles because they fancied their partner? The six-times Grand Slam doubles champion Jacco Eltingh admits he did just that. “I was hopelessly in love with this woman player, so I signed up for a Dutch league tennis team just so I could play mixed doubles with her – I even accepted less money than another offer because she was there. But the day after I signed, the league decided to abandon mixed doubles with immediate effect, and two weeks later, the woman I was chasing fell out with the club and left. So I never played mixed with her.” The postscript to that story is that the player, Hellas Ter Riet, later made it on the tour, where Eltingh was able to chase her, and they are today married with three kids. But such tales of romance on the mixed doubles court are few and far between. Of the tennis marriages, hardly any started with mixed doubles, and the most celebrated tennis marriage had a high-profile failure – Andre Agassi could never get Steffi Graf to play mixed with him, despite him winning a bet that she would do so. You do get players who are romantically involved playing mixed. Igor Andreev played with girlfriend Maria Kirilenko here at Wimbledon, losing in the semi-finals, but they had a bad start at last year’s US Open, where they lost 6-1, 6-0 in the first round to Andy Ram and Nathalie Dechy. “It’s hard to play with someone you’re dating,” says Andreev. When asked which came first, the dating or the mixed doubles, he replied: “They both sort of came together, or perhaps the dating came first. Anyway, we had to play one more time, because we can’t end our mixed doubles career by winning just one game.” In some cases, partners are chosen specifically with an absence of potential romance in mind. One former top player, who for several obvious reasons asked not to be named, said his wife would never let him play with an attractive partner, so he looked primarily for a quality player and secondly for one without too much sex appeal. The whole business of finding a mixed doubles partner has become more disciplined over the years. Jo Durie, who won the Wimbledon mixed with Jeremy Bates in 1987, said: “It was all very haphazard in my day. In the last couple of hours before the sign-in deadline, you had people wandering into the players’ restaurant looking for someone they could play with. It’s probably much more systematic and serious today.” Jonas Björkman, who played with Alicia Molik at Wimbledon, confirms that: “The serious partnerships are made for two or three tournaments,” he says. “The major pairings for the US Open will already be decided by now.” Even when there are no ulterior motives, players can still be a little coy about asking a member of the opposite gender if to play mixed doubles with them. In early 1988, Jana Novotna wanted to team up with Jim Pugh, who with Rick Leach was half of the world’s best doubles team at the time. So she sounded out the WTA Tour supervisor Georgina Clark, who thought it a great idea. “Leave it with me,” Clark said, “I’ll arrange it.” The result was four Grand Slam mixed doubles titles for the pair, including at Wimbledon in 1989. Novotna never played with another partner. Not that everyone is coy about asking. The opposite extreme came when Martina Navratilova asked Leander Paes to play mixed with him. “I got to the US Open expecting to play mixed with Lisa Raymond, but just before the sign-in deadline Lisa told me she was playing with someone else,” recalls Paes. “I had a few seconds to realise that I probably wouldn’t be playing the mixed because I didn’t have a partner when Martina walked up to me and said ‘You are playing mixed doubles with me.’ There was just no argument.” Not that he should have argued – that approach eventually led to Navratilova’s last Grand Slam doubles title at Wimbledon alongside Paes in the 2003 mixed.
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