Wimbledon will be my first Grand Slam tournament with my new partner Neal Skupski and I’m really excited to start playing with him.
I’d played with Bruno Soares for three-and-a-half years, which is a pretty long time in doubles partnership terms. We had a lot of success but I felt I needed a new challenge, different energies and a different perspective.
In choosing a new partner, the goal is to find the player best suited to you, someone who can complement your style and your strengths on the court.
Neal has been taught doubles the same way I have and we have similar philosophies. I think our styles and understanding are fairly similar.
But I don’t know Neal that well even though he is British. He is a few years younger than me and over the past few years, he’s played a lot of Challengers before playing more on the Tour, so it’s now a case of spending time with him and getting to know him better. We need to learn how to
communicate with each other, discuss game styles and strategies.
It’s a big change for me. I spent a long time with Bruno and we are really close friends. We knew what made each other tick and how we would get the best performance out of each other.
I’m starting that process with Neal from scratch and it can take time. We’re not living out of each other’s pockets, but we make sure have lunch together and do our recovery together as we need to get used to being in each other’s company.
We need to find our feet as a partnership but we want to have a great tournament at Wimbledon. We’re both good players with good game styles for grass, so our goal is obviously to try to win the tournament. We’ll give it our best shot.
Neal and I have a tough opening match against Ivan Dodig and Filip Polasek. Dodig has been at the top of the doubles game for the last five years or so, he’s won multiple Grand Slams, and Polasek is a top doubles player.
It will be a tough first match for both of us, I’m sure they’re not super happy with the draw either. You can only beat the people in front of you, and we’ll be going hell for leather to try to make that happen.
