It was a tale of tiebreaks.
Before the men’s doubles final, Harri Heliövaara and Henry Patten had a perfect run of winning five out of five tiebreaks played during this year’s Wimbledon.
Their opponents in the final, Australian duo Max Purcell and Jordan Thompson, had lost one of one.
The final, one of the most remarkable doubles championship matches in a grand slam, required a tiebreak to decide each set, including a match tiebreak to settle the championship.
The score, in favour of Heliövaara of Finland and British Patten, was 6-7(7) 7-6(8) 7-6(9)
The champions’ backstory begins with unseeded Heliövaara and Patten beating seeded teams in four of their six rounds, including Purcell and Thompson, the 15th seeds.
Purcell/Thompson did them a favour by defeating the No. 1 seeds, Marcel Granollers and Horacio Zeballos in their semi final in a masterclass of smashes and lobs.
Heliövaara was already a grand slam champion through his mixed doubles victory at last year’s US Open with Anna Danilina. He played men’s doubles regularly with John Peers, the owner of two grand slam titles and runner up at three others, including at Wimbledon.
But in March, Heliövaara stopped playing with Peers. The next month he teamed with Patten, the 63rd ranked doubles player who had never won an ATP title and had never been past the third round of a grand slam.
Their partnership began with winning the ATP 250 in Marrakech, Morroco. They followed up Marrakech with wins at Challengers in Madrid and Turin before snaring another ATP 250 win in Lyon.
To warm up for the lawn courts of Wimbledon, they played Eastbourne, making the semis and only going out to multiple-slam winning players, Matthew Ebden and Heliövaara’s ex-partner Peers.
In the first set of the Wimbledon final, Purcell/Thompson played so well that they didn’t lose a point on serve until they went 0-15 when Purcell was serving at 4-5. He responded with an ace and they soon levelled the score at 5-5.
In the tiebreak, they went up 6-1 but their rivals saved the five set points against them – Patten saving four – and got one of their own when Heliövaara’s volley split the middle. He made two errors either side of a Thompson ace and the Australians succeeded on their sixth set point.
Purcell/Thompson got their first break point, which was also a championship point, during the second set. At 6-5 40-30 they could only watch as Patten saved it with a short angled volley.
In the tiebreak for the second set, Purcell/Thompson went ahead again. This time 5-2 with a perfect lob onto the line from Purcell. A let cord on the next point started the resurgence of their opponents. Then another Patten volley whizzed in between the Australians, followed by his two unreturnable serves for 6-5 and a set point.
But Heliövaara slipped and Purcell took advantage with a volley winner. When Patten hit into the net, the Australians had a second championship point. They missed it again through a great serve from Heliövaara.
The next point demonstrated the great combining of the Fin and the Brit. Heliövaara stretched for a lob travelling over his head but missed. Patten was standing a couple of metres behind him and managed to return the ball on Heliövaara’s behalf. Somehow Thompson kept his focus and hit a winner to the far corner to earn a third championship point at 8-7.
Again it was not to be. With all four players featuring in an intense exchange, Thompson did a great job with three volleys but missed the fourth into net and it was level again, 8-8. A great run and pass by Heliövaara landed on the baseline. Then Thompson returned Patton’s serve into the net, so the tiebreak score was 8-10.
The final set remained on serve. The Australians got themselves two break points on Heliövaara’s serve in the seventh game but couldn’t convert.
Three times in the match tiebreak they achieved mini-breaks and eventually reached 8-6, but Heliövaara/Patten continually caught up.
At 8-9, Purcell saved a championship point with a serve out wide that registered 211 km/h.
Heliövaara/Patten immediately got another championship point after Purcell hit out with a desperate lob reply to a smash, and when Thompson returned Heliövaara’s serve into the net it was all over – in two hours, 49 minutes.
Purcell and Thompson lost despite never facing a break point, serving 15 aces to two, hitting 19 more winners and winning 10 more points in the match. But the other team won five of the last six points.
Whoever lost the match would have been unlucky. There was not a single break of serve in the three sets and the four players each contributed to the extraordinary doubles tennis on display.
Patten was a revelation – daring, precise and at times freaky. Somehow at the age of 28 his talent and resilience have emerged and he’s won a grand slam. And not just any grand slam, but Wimbledon, in front of thousands of enthusiastic countrymen.
Plus, his share of the Wimbledon win was £325,000, eclipsing his total career earnings of $305,000.
Referring to Wimbledon’s decision last year to reduce the men’s doubles matches from best of five sets to best of three, Purcell said wryly, “It would have been nice to have the extra two sets to play with this time, for sure.”
It may have crossed his mind that when he and Matthew Ebden won Wimbledon in 2022, they would have lost had it been best of three sets and needed to win the fourth and fifth sets to hold up the trophy. That day they won 7–6(5), 6–7(3), 4–6, 6–4, 7–6 (10-2) over Croatian team Nikola Mektić and Mate Pavić.
After the trophies were presented this year, Patten acknowledged the efforts of the Purcell and Thompson, “It couldn’t have been a closer match.”
Title photo of a Wimbledon sign by Simone Kemler