Australian Open: Luke Saville and Max Purcell in doubles fantasy

Luke Saville and Max Purcell have described reaching the final of the Australian Open doubles as a dream come true.

Australian doubles pairing Luke Saville, left, and Max Purcell are out to break a 23-year drought at the Australian Open. Picture: AAP

Luke Saville and Max Purcell have described reaching the final of the Australian Open doubles as a dream come true as they seek to break a 23-year drought for Australian hopes.

While Davis Cup stalwart John Peers is a recent winner of the Open with Henri Kontinen, Saville and Purcell will become the first all-Australian combination since the “Woodies” to win the title, if successful on Sunday.

Todd Woodbridge and Mark Woodforde were beaten in a final in 1998, a year after claiming their second title on home soil, but they were an established combination at the top level.

Purcell, who qualified for the men’s singles, and Saville, a former Wimbledon boys’ champion, needed a wildcard to gain entry.

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Saville’s fiance, Daria Gavrilova, has been watching courtside and the family of both players will fly into Melbourne for tomorrow’s decider against Rajeev Ram and Joe Salisbury.

“We are thrilled. It is definitely a dream come true, making it through to the final,” Saville said.

“As we started out the week, if you had said we would be in the final, we probably would not quite have believed it. We have always had belief in our game but to be playing for the Australian Open n front of family and friends and doing it with my best mate, it has been really good.”

Although they needed to be gifted entry into the tournament, their performances over the past year on the ATP Challenger circuit demonstrated they were a pair on the rise. The combination claimed secondary-tier titles in Adelaide, Launceston, Zhangjiagang and Anning in China, Seoul, Binghamton in the US and Traralgon in a prolific 2019.

They started this season with another ATP Challenger success in Canberra and are on a 13-match winning streak coming into Sunday’s final.

The final will be their biggest payday by a significant margin, regardless of how they fare. The winners split $760,000 and the runners-up share $380,000.

That money will help them travel more extensively in 2020 in a sport that is taxing financially for those ranked outside the top 100 in singles and all bar the higher-ranked doubles combinations.

Importantly, they have halved their rankings and both could surpass Peers as Australia’s top-ranked doubles players.

Their jump in ranking also affords them greater opportunities to play at grand slam and ATP Tour level and Saville said on Friday they had already held preliminary discussions about their schedule for the rest of the year.

Saville, 26, and Purcell, 21, are great mates and the latter said the camaraderie of travelling with a friend made the grind of touring a little easier.

“Especially with how expensive it is, it is really tough to have a team around you, so it does get lonely. We are overseas for six to 12 weeks at a time,” he said.

“It is hard, but we really found a lot of smiles on court with each other and we really try to enjoy it and, regardless of whether we win or lose, we are just happy we are out there competing. We love playing tennis as a sport and a job. What could be better than that?”

For Saville, it is a significant moment in his senior career. Having won the junior Wimbledon title in the same year Ash Barty was the girls’ champion, he had lofty singles aspirations.

A former Australian Open junior champion, he won a round at Wimbledon in 2014 but has struggled to make the transition to senior ranks in singles, though his results in the latter stages of last year were promising.

“I don’t really play tennis for the spotlight or anything. I play it because I love it,” he said.