By RICHIE HALL
A few years ago, Rajeev Ram shifted his focus from singles to doubles as continued his career on the ATP (men’s professional tennis) tour.
Ram calls it a second career. He can also call himself a champion, as he started the decade by winning his first Grand Slam men’s doubles title. The victory has established the 36-year-old from Carmel as one of the leading doubles players in the world, and Ram has no plans to stop now.
Ram and his partner, Great Britain’s Joe Salisbury, won the Australian Open men’s doubles title in January. The duo won six matches in the 64-player draw, dropping only one set along the way. In the championship match, Ram and Sailsbury beat the Australian pair of Max Purcell and Luke Saville 6-4, 6-2.
“It was a bit of a strange situation,” said Ram. “The guys we were playing were wild cards. They’re Australian, so they got an exemption. They made it all the way to the finals.”
Ram and Salisbury were seeded 11th in the tournament, which made them obvious favorites. Ram said that made for a bit of pressure, and then there was the fact that he and Salisbury were playing an unknown team. But they went out and won easily.
“We went out and played a great match. I did my thing, my partner played amazing,” said Ram. He was happy with how they handled the moment of being in such an important match.
“It could’ve been tough, it could’ve been tricky and I think we both did a really nice job of handling the moment well,” said Ram.
Right after the Australian Open, Ram reached his career-high ranking of No. 5 on the ATP doubles ranking list. He is currently ranked ninth.
The 2020 Australian Open was the 58th time that Ram had played doubles in a Grand Slam, or major, tournament (Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon and U.S. Open), and in fact, he has played doubles in every major since Wimbledon 2007. But Ram said that he didn’t really focus on doubles until a few years ago, as he began to wind up his singles career.
Ram had a solid singles career, winning two titles at the grass-court event in Newport, R.I. in 2009 and 2015 and getting as high as No. 56 in the ATP rankings. But it was around 2016, he said, “when I really started to focus on my doubles. I almost feel like I started a second career then, or a shifted focus.”
That change in focus has paid off handsomely, as Ram has won 12 of his 20 career ATP doubles titles since 2016. At the end of that year, he even reached the championship match of the ATP World Tour Finals with his then-partner, South Africa’s Raven Klaasen, where the two lost a third-set super tiebreak by a narrow 10-8 margin.
Ram struck up his current partnership with Salisbury in 2019. The duo won two tournaments that year and reached three other finals, also getting to the quarter-finals of the French Open. They also qualified for the Nitto ATP Finals.
“We played all of 2019, so we know each other pretty well,” said Ram. “We played a lot of big matches. We were a level that could win.”
Ram’s 2020 Australian Open win was his second in a Grand Slam event. He won his first at the 2019 Australian Open, teaming up with the Czech Republic’s Barbora Krejcikova to win the mixed doubles title, again beating an Australian team in the final. In 2016, Ram and fellow American CoCo Vandeweghe reached the U.S. Open mixed doubles final, but fell in straight sets.
“When you play at the end of a major in any capacity, it’s special,” said Ram. “It’s a pretty special feeling. That experience really helped me going into this Australian Open final.”
Experience is something Ram can claim, as he has been a pro since 2004. But he’s not the only 30-something playing at an elite level: In the current top 10 doubles rankings, nine of those players, including Ram, are between the ages of 33 and 38. The only player under 30 in the top 10 is Salisbury, who is 27.
Ram said there’s a couple of direct causes for players still performing at a high level into their 30s. First, “the game has gotten a lot more physical,” he said, and young players don’t have the physical capabilities to play at the highest level of the games.
“It takes a bit longer to develop that physicality,” said Ram.
The second reason is due to “huge advancements in the area of sports science,” said Ram, such as nutrition, recovery and training. That allows players to keep their bodies performing at a high level so they can play tennis at a high level for a longer period.
“You’re seeing players play into their 30s because their bodies allow them to do so,” said Ram. He noted that when he started playing, recovery wasn’t much thought of, now such things as ice baths and massages are the norm.
Another reason is that players are participating in less tournaments per year. Ram remembers that he once had a year where we played over 100 matches, but now he has cut back on his schedule in order to lengthen his career.
Of course, every pro tennis player’s career is on hold as both the men’s and women’s tours are halted due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Ram said that right now sports are not the biggest concern. The international nature of tennis makes it likely that it will be one of the last sports to start up again.
“We’re going to be the tail end of anything that comes back,” said Ram. He also agrees with the postponement of the Olympics to 2021. Ram teamed with Venus Williams to win the silver medal in the mixed doubles event back in 2016.
“It’s as global as it gets,” said Ram. “I think they made the right move, unfortunate as it was.”
Once he gets back on the tour, Ram doesn’t see himself slowing down. He’s still enjoying playing, is healthy and able to deal with the requirements of tennis.
“I’m definitely one of the fortunate ones,” he said.
Ram’s serve and volley game (left) has been an asset for him as he shifted his focus to doubles. He is currently ranked ninth in the ATP doubles rankings. At right is his partner Joe Salisbury.