Harri Heliövaara told how the place in the mixed doubles opened up.
Finland the number one tennis doubles player Harri Heliövaara was eliminated in the Australian Open doubles in the second round together with Australia of John Peers with. There was still a mixed doubles match left, but in order to get there, Heliövaara had to resort to quite a bit of tactics.
Heliövaara ended up playing mixed doubles with a Norwegian Ulrike Eiker with. They got in as the last couple, but it was not easy to get a place. Heliövaara told about the events on his blog before the start of the mixed doubles.
There is no world ranking in mixed doubles, but those who qualify for the tournament are decided by adding up the ranking of both players in a pair. Registration is still done by writing names on paper, and Heliövaara took advantage of this.
The joint ranking of Heliövaara and Eiker was 66, but according to Heliövaara there were two pairs in the joint ranking of 67 who could have passed the Finnish-Norwegian pair by switching playing pairs.
“Our tactic was to keep our intentions to play together hidden. A few minutes before the registration deadline, among other things Joe Salisbury signed up by Heather Watson with, thinking they were the last team to join, but finally 15 seconds before the finish line, I added our name to the list,” says Heliövaara.
“I only let go of the pen when the referee took the paper for himself, and there was no way for Joe or anyone else to change their partner to another one with whom they would have gotten ahead of us. It was a tough game, but it was worth it.”
However, Heliövaara and Eiker's match in the mixed doubles was broken in the first round, when the eighth-placed Ellen Perez and Jean-Julien Rojer were better after a tight fight with 6–7, 7–6, 12–10.
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