Double Trouble

The ATP Champions Tour is about more than just singles competition.

It’s also about entertainment, having fun, and giving the players a chance to show off their mind-blowing racquet skills. Those factors tally perfectly with Doubles tennis, and while the Champions Tour is officially a singles circuit, many of our tournaments stage doubles matches as well.

While Mansour Bahrami plays some sensational singles tennis as well, doubles gives him the perfect opportunity to show what he can do. Since 1997, spectators have arrived at ATP Champions Tour events to see the big names that they remember from Wimbledon, but many of them have left talking about Bahrami.

Whether he’s serving while holding six tennis balls in his left hand, smashing a loose ball into the sky and catching it in his pocket, or playing a through-the-legs lob with his back turned to his opponent, you can be sure that Bahrami will entertain you.

On the doubles court he has a whole new range of opportunities. There is the ‘imaginary point’, where Bahrami orchestrates the players in playing a slow-motion point without a tennis ball. He will happily administer medical care to either his opponents or partner if they are feeling the strain, and occasionally he might hurdle the net to make it three against one, or take a seat on one of the line-judges’ chairs and hit a few lobs from there.

The doubles action can be quite explosive as well, particularly when some of the established teams get together. A couple of years ago, Todd Woodbridge and Mark Woodforde reprised their Wimbledon final against Jacco Eltingh and Paul Haarhuis, while at the Royal Albert Hall in London at the end of the year, John McEnroe’s old partner Peter Fleming is a regular, Tom Gullikson plays, and former World Number One doubles player Anders Jarryd will also take to the court.