26-05-2025
Meet Henry Patten, Britain's unheralded Wimbledon champion
He is the No2 seed heading into Roland Garros. He triumphed at Wimbledon last summer and then headed to Australia and won that grand-slam tournament as well . . . yet you may not have heard of him. Which is faintly ridiculous given that both those titles were won amid high drama and with sublime, entertaining skill.
Henry Patten is a British doubles specialist and his breakthrough success has come alongside Harri Heliovaara, a passionate Finn whose reaction to winning on Centre Court was arguably the highlight of last year's championships. Both players were in slight shock, given they were unseeded, but Heliovaara repeatedly broke down under the fraternal gaze of his partner.
It was the stuff of dreams and the two men headed to the champions' dinner as, well, champions. Patten, 29, was shy at the thought of giving a speech but had prepared to say a few words to thank the coaching team who had helped him and his partner seal glory. By the denouement of the men's doubles, Centre Court was jam-packed and raucous in support of the battling Brit, but the achievement featured for only a few seconds on the video shown at the dinner.
It was a sign of things to come. Patten's triumph was not even mentioned in the speeches. It was a kick in the teeth.
'I was absolutely fuming, to be honest,' he says. 'I was thinking maybe I would get a 'Congratulations to the men's doubles champions', especially for being a British winner.
'It's something that, at the time, I thought was really celebrated. And there was nothing.'
Heliovaara, 35, blogged words to the effect that the food was nice but not the lack of recognition, and Patten mentioned his dismay to a few people at the National Tennis Centre, which led to Debbie Jevans, the chairwoman of the All England Club, writing each of them a letter of apology, stating that their omission had been a complete oversight.
'All I can hope for is that it doesn't happen again, that whoever has that moment in the future, they don't have that disappointment,' Patten says. 'Which I think hopefully has now been solved.'
What has not yet been solved is the way doubles is often overlooked by tournament and TV schedulers. When Patten won in Melbourne there was almost no one there to see it, with the match finishing at 2am local time. A family from his home town of Manningtree, Essex, who had moved to Australia and whom Patten has known since the age of five, were there, as were a clutch of ecstatic Finns.
Patten's tennis career was forged in the United States while he studied at the University of North Carolina before a postgraduate course at Durham, and he turned professional in 2020. The closest he thought he would get to being a regular at Wimbledon was when he worked collating data for IBM at the championships in 2016. His partnership with Heliovaara began only in April last year, when the Finn was ranked slightly higher. He was initially a little reluctant to commit, but they complement each other beautifully.
Doubles does have its big moments; there is the Davis Cup and, of course, the Olympics. Patten smiles as he recalls the euphoria prompted by Rafael Nadal and Carlos Alcaraz pairing up at the Paris Games.
'All of a sudden everyone was watching the doubles, and they did pretty well,' Patten says. 'There were lots of exciting storylines that came out of that. And people enjoy watching doubles. They really do.
'The most important thing is, how much does the viewer care about the player? How well do they know the player? Obviously, when I'm playing in Wimbledon, people kind of feel that connection to me. But when I'm playing in, let's say Shanghai, let's face it, they haven't seen me on the telly. They haven't seen me on any of the social media. So I don't understand why they're going to watch that match, to be fair.
'There is a real lack of visibility and connection for the fans.'
Should Patten compete at the LA Olympics in 2028, though, the connection will flourish. Becoming an Olympian is his dream.
Being the British No1 in men's doubles gives him some control over plotting how to do that, especially in terms of who to team up with. He admits that pairing up with another British player would also make life 'a lot easier' for Leon Smith, the GB Davis Cup team captain.
In the meantime, though, there is little appetite to interfere with his fruitful partnership with Heliovaara, whose dream is also to compete at an Olympics but who paused his career in 2013 when suffering from an autoimmune disease.
Two grand-slam titles may not have propelled Patten to becoming a household name just yet but his day-to-day life has changed a good deal.
'I've got my picture on the wall at the National Tennis Centre [in southwest London] which is really nice. Once you get to a certain world ranking, they support you really well. I have a doctor, I have a nutritionist, I have a personal trainer, private health insurance with Bupa.
'I have access to Louis Cayer, who is the best doubles coach in the world. I have access to all of the facilities whenever I want. It is without a doubt the best doubles training programme in the world and the most successful one too. So it's really exciting to be a part of that.'
What has also changed post-Wimbledon is the attitude of his peers. 'Respect from my colleagues grew massively,' he says. 'Tennis is a funny sport. It's basically a bunch of extremely competitive men travelling around the world together and seeing each other every week.
'People know much more about who I am and my world ranking kind of shot up and they were, I don't know, worried or excited about it — one of the two. Because when you go up, someone else has to come down.
'Last year we were playing much, much smaller tournaments but now we qualify for Monte Carlo [where they reached the semi-finals] and Madrid [where they got to the quarter-finals]. I'd never played in Monte Carlo before, I'd never played in Madrid before. They are much bigger tournaments that are much nicer to travel to and you're kind of treated better in general with better hotels and better food on site.'
Patten has been recognised in the street but he thinks that's because he was carrying tennis gear. He still goes, now and again, to his local chess club in Manningtree, in an old church, where nobody really chats about anything not related to chess.
Patten enjoys playing on clay, and he and Heliovaara will be the No2 seeds at the French Open
MATHIAS SCHULZ/ZUMA PRESS WIRE/ALAMY
'They all think I'm just an idiot. I lose every match when I go there. I think of it in terms of tennis and it's like I'm a pretty bad club tennis player,' he says.
'They don't know I'm a tennis player. I'd be away for a month and come back with a tan but no one would ask me where I had been.'
Patten enjoys playing on clay even if, in doubles, the surface meddles with rankings. No matter who emerges as the men's doubles champions in Paris, he would like sports fans to have dipped into watching it.
'Doubles players really get emotional,' he says. 'I think Harri is a great example of that. Almost every match, he's going crazy. There are lots of moments that kind of go missing, but that's why people watch sport — to have that emotion and connection.'
