Henri Kontinen of Finland is the only tour-level player left on the ATP World Tour after countryman Jarkko Nieminen retired. The Fin is currently partnered with Australian John Peers for doubles together on tour, and the team currently stands in seventh in the ATP Race to London.
In an exclusive sit down with VAVEL USA, Kontinen talks about his partnership with John Peers, what he thinks mentally after being unable to convert multiple match points, and more.
On Being Unable To Convert Multiple Match Points
In doubles, sometimes in singles, players will not be able to convert the number of match points they are given sometimes. Kontinen said, “I think it’s part of doubles, and the way we play. If you don’t come to Grand Slams every week, we play match tiebreaks, and we get into situations like these pretty often. You sort of get used to it.”
He said that when you miss chances that you know you should put away, you just have to forget it and move on to play the next point because the pace of doubles is fast.
On His Partnership With Heather Watson
The 26-year-old won his first career Grand Slam title a few weeks ago at Wimbledon in mixed doubles, partnering with Britain’s own Heather Watson. The Championships was the first time the two had played together. The stars and planets aligned as two walkovers (one against second-seeded Elena Vesnina/Bruno Soares) into the third round, the upset of the 16th-seeded duo of Martina Hingis/Leander Paes set them up for a beautiful wide open draw to get into the final. They would take advantage of that draw to go on and win the final.
He said that there was no special reason that he and Heather Watson chose to play together. He alluded that they planned to play together at the French Open, but their ranking combined wasn’t high enough so they couldn’t get in. He also noted the fact that the mixed doubles draw in Wimbledon is a bit bigger, allowing them to get in. They were originally hoping for a wild card, but it was not needed.
He continued with, “I know her a little bit from before, and my coach actually knows her a lot better. He said she’s a nice girl and a good player so I said why not. We had a lot of fun there. We’ll see with the US Open, we had not talked about it yet but possibly if we get in our rankings, we’ll do it.”
On Countryman Jarkko Nieminen, Davis Cup Memories
As we all know, Jarkko Nieminen was the lone singles player Finland had on the ATP World Tour. Nieminen reached a career-high of 13 in the world, made 13 finals, and won two titles. He made it to at least the second week of all four Grand Slams, with his best showing coming at the Australian Open, Wimbledon, and the US Open by making the quarterfinals.
Kontinen said he has a lot of special Davis Cup memories with Nieminen and the other guys on the team. When he was younger, Nieminen was the only tennis star in Finland so that was the only player he followed growing up. Being a junior, he thought it was special to be able to get to know and play with him.
He added, “We became good friends and had a lot of nice wins in Davis Cup as well as playing the same tournaments. Playing the same tournaments was great because it allowed me to get dinner with a Finnish guy and talk Finnish with someone else which was fun, but obviously, now I’m the only one here. Hopefully, some junior comes up and eventually takes his spot.”
On His Partners Over The Last Two Years
For most of the 2015 season, Kontinen partnered with Croatian Marin Draganja. Their record at the big events were not great, but they played extremely well at ATP 250 and ATP 500 events. The duo won their first title last year in Draganja’s home country of Croatia in the capital Zagreb. They followed that up the following week with a title in Marseille, going the distance in all four of their matches.
Their biggest title last year came in Barcelona, defeating Jamie Murray and John Peers. At the end of the year, Kontinen partnered with Filipino Treat Huey. The duo won a title in their first two events together, St. Petersburg and Kuala Lumpur, before their partnership ended after Basel.
At the end of last year after a career year together, Jamie Murray and John Peers decided to split with the Brit partnering with Bruno Soares.
This year, he’s partnering with Australian John Peers. They won in their first tournament together in Brisbane and went on to win in Munich this past spring as well. They were quarterfinalist at Wimbledon, losing to eventual champions Nicolas Mahut and Pierre-Hugues Herbert. They would head into the Citi Open, coming off of a title in Munich.
Kontinen complimented his partners right away saying they were all very good players but are all quite different since all doubles players are quite different because of strengths and weaknesses. Before he played with them, the 26-year-old had a feeling that he would play pretty well once partnering with them. He added that their game style and personality is important because they travel every week and practice a lot together.
He said about Peers, “John just had asked me at the end of the last season if I wanted to give it a go, and I was very excited to try. I still had a few tournaments left with Treat, but we were already set there so that was pretty normal. We just finished those, and we said we’d start from the beginning of the year. It’s been a fun half of the year and hopefully, we can keep improving and get some better results.”
You can follow Henri Kontinen on Twitter @henrikontinen.