Australian Davis Cup player Matt Ebden reflects on a memorable week competing in Manchester.
Manchester, Great Britain, 18 September 2023 | Matt Ebden
Matt Ebden played a starring role for the Australian Davis Cup team in Manchester, winning all three doubles matches he contested alongside Max Purcell. This helped Australia qualify for November’s Final 8 stage. The 35-year-old from Perth shares an exclusive insight into the team’s successful week …
It feels amazing, it truly does. I’m not sure there’s too many better feelings than performing well and fighting and winning with your team-mates and for your country. It’s extra special. It’s different. We rely on each other so much out there. We all give our best and can’t win without each other.
It always gives you great confidence when you perform well in key moments. It’s about delivering on the biggest stages, in the biggest tournaments and events in the world, and it doesn’t get any bigger than Davis Cup. I love it. I love those extra heightened feelings and extra challenges. I really enjoy the battle.
We definitely had a tough start to the week being down 0-2 to Great Britain, but we knew we had to win that doubles point to give ourselves a chance to qualify later in the week and we were able to do that.
It was tough again the following day, we went down 0-1 against France after the first singles. So from then on for the rest of the week, we were just one loss away from being eliminated.
It was really backs-against-the-wall kind of stuff. I think we all definitely took inspiration from Rochey (Tony Roche) and Lleyton (Hewitt) and fought and clawed our way back with all the wins after that. It was a huge team effort.
It felt very natural to team up with Max again and it turned out really well, winning three from three. Max is concentrating more on his singles schedule this year, which is the reason we aren’t playing together on the tour. I needed a full-time dedicated partner to go for the top of the world rankings in doubles and the top of the team race rankings for the end-of-year ATP World Tour Finals.
> READ: Ebden sets sight on rising to world No.1
From the very first practice set Max and I played together after arriving in Manchester, we hit the ground running. We previously played over one year together and went through some of the biggest moments and tournaments as well as Davis Cup challenges, so there’s nothing that can trump that…
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