{"id":27549,"date":"2025-11-22T19:25:28","date_gmt":"2025-11-22T08:25:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/?p=27549"},"modified":"2025-11-22T19:25:29","modified_gmt":"2025-11-22T08:25:29","slug":"dynamic-duo-hijikata-and-polmans-capture-perpetual-nsw-open-doubles-glory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/news\/2025\/11\/22\/dynamic-duo-hijikata-and-polmans-capture-perpetual-nsw-open-doubles-glory","title":{"rendered":"Dynamic Duo Hijikata and Polmans Capture Perpetual NSW Open Doubles Glory"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
The first key to a winning doubles combination is to find yourself a good partner. And to find yourself a good partner, you might as well start at the top.<\/div>\n
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So, how does one manage to book a date with a grand slam doubles champion and Wimbledon finalist only a few months ago?<\/div>\n
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\u201cI had to try to lock him down a few weeks in advance,\u201d Marc Polmans laughs. \u201cI\u2019ll take (credit for) that one.\u201d<\/div>\n
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Rinky Hijikata\u2019s focus will, for a long time, be on his singles career. But on the doubles court, he\u2019s rolled gold.<\/div>\n
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The former Australian Open champion also had the distinction of nearly going all the way at the All England Club this year and before he\u2019d even really contemplated what he\u2019d be doing for the Perpetual NSW Open, Polmans was shooting for the stars. He proposed they play together at Sydney Olympic Park, if Hijikata had the time.<\/div>\n
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Thankfully for him, Hijikata said yes.<\/div>\n
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And on a court where he is starting to create a collection of feelgood moments, Hijikata was the star turn as he and Polmans snared one of the oldest titles in the sport with a 6-0, 6-4 straight sets demolition of Dane Sweeny and Calum Puttergill at Ken Rosewall Arena on Saturday.<\/div>\n
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\u201cWe spend a lot of the year playing overseas and don\u2019t get to come home that often, so to have a tournament here is really nice,\u201d Hijikata says. \u201cIt\u2019s great playing on Ken Rosewall Arena and I\u2019ve got some good memories here, so hopefully we\u2019ll be back in the not so distant future.<\/div>\n
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\u201c(Polmans) does everything well. He\u2019s so skilful so it kind of makes it easy to pair up with him. If we have to adapt, he\u2019s so adaptable. He serves well and covers the net well. He does a lot of the work and makes me look good sometimes.\u201d<\/div>\n
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Hijikata has been one of the most popular players on site this week with young children drawn to the story of the kid who grew up in Sydney and became a grand slam winner and Davis Cup player.<\/div>\n
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And what does his partner think of him?<\/div>\n
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\u201cI jumped on Rinky\u2019s train today,\u201d Polmans says. \u201cI thought he was on fire today, serving, returning, ripping the ball from the back and it makes it a bit easier for me at the net when he\u2019s firing groundstrokes from the baseline.<\/div>\n
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\u201cI think it\u2019s a good combination and hopefully we can play some more in the future.\u201d<\/div>\n
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How much? That\u2019s only a question they\u2019ll be able to answer in the new year as both prepare for the slog ahead in the Australian summer.<\/div>\n
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Hijikata would have been disappointed not to make the singles final like last year \u2013 bowing out in the quarter-finals to James McCabe \u2013 and his conqueror couldn\u2019t make the final two either as Japanese giant killer Hayato Matsuoka kept his mesmerising run going.<\/div>\n
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The Japanese world No.483, who had to win two matches of qualifying just to make the main draw, had already beaten Bernard Tomic, who retired one point into the second set, and 16-year-old Cruz Hewitt earlier in the tournament.<\/div>\n
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He prevailed over McCabe 7-5, 6-4 to set up a final against No.1 seed James Duckworth, who is yet to drop a service game this week and battled through several short weather delays to beat Jason Kubler 7-5, 6-2.<\/div>\n
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\u201cIt was a little bit tricky today and I had a similar thing (on Friday),\u201d Duckworth said. \u201cThere\u2019s not much you can do and you try to stay as focused as possible. I think I did a really good job of staying engaged and staying locked in.<\/div>\n
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\u201cI thought the level today was quite high. Jason played some great tennis and I had to play some of my best tennis to get through.<\/div>\n
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\u201cI\u2019ve never seen (Matsuoka) play outside of these two weeks. He qualified and made the semis last week and has qualified and made the final this week. He\u2019s beaten quality opposition in both events so it\u2019s going to be really tough, but I\u2019ll prepare as well as I can and give it my best shot.\u201d<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first key to a winning doubles combination is to find yourself a good partner. And to find yourself a good partner, you might as well start at the top.<\/p>\n

So, how does one manage to book a date with a grand slam doubles champion and Wimbledon finalist only a few months ago?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6323,"featured_media":27551,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6323"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}