Berrettini, it takes a lot of courage: mixed doubles is a crash test of sorts. It’s every man for himself before it’s too late….
You can be bonded, close-knit, totally in sync. Having chemistry in everyday life does not necessarily imply that you have to have it on the court, though. And professional tennis players know very well that this is not enough for a couple, no matter how well broken in, to be successful even in the doubles category.
If that were the case, on the other hand, it would be as simple as that. We would all be good, wouldn’t we? It is therefore a case, not the rule, that Paula Badosa and Stefanos Tsitsipas also function well as doubles players and not only as boyfriends. The Iberian and the Hellenic made their debut in this new capacity just in the past few days, treading the prestigious stage of the World tennis league, now in its second edition. The two lovebirds, who have been together more or less since last spring, were hesitant, but in hindsight they did well to give it a try.
The most glamorous couple on the major circuit proved that they are doing just fine on the court as well as in life. In their first mixed doubles match, in fact, they beat Sofia Kenin and Daniil Medvedev in four and four-eighths, demonstrating a great chemistry and complicity unique to them. “Let’s say this match was a test,” Paula joked in the on-court interview, “in the end either we would have divorced or things between us would have been even better. “You mean we would have broken up, not divorced – Stefanos promptly replied – for a moment I was afraid I had married without knowing it…”.
Badosa and Tsitsipas braver than Berrettini and Tomljanovic
They were brave, therefore Badosa and Tsitsipas, mixed doubles being, for the tennis players, a kind of crash test. A litmus test of the kind that do or die.
They had not had the same courage as Tsitsidosa in the past, Matteo Berrettini and his ex-girlfriend, Croatian naturalized Australian Ajla Tomljanovic. They, too, like the Greek and the Spaniard, could have gone on the court together and undermined the pairs in the context of some tournament. They thought about it several times, even, but then always desisted. Partly so as not to take away space from the singles, which was their priority, and partly because they were afraid, which was quite likely, of fighting, as they experience tennis quite differently from each other.
So although they were in the process of signing up for mixed doubles at Wimbledon 2021, they never tasted the thrill of playing together. And perhaps, in hindsight, given the way it turned out between them, it is for the best. Probably, it would have only hastened the breakup.
