{"id":19744,"date":"2024-07-04T09:08:27","date_gmt":"2024-07-04T01:08:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/?p=19744"},"modified":"2024-07-04T10:31:18","modified_gmt":"2024-07-04T02:31:18","slug":"world-no-1-matt-ebden-makes-promising-start-at-wimbledon-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/news\/2024\/07\/04\/world-no-1-matt-ebden-makes-promising-start-at-wimbledon-2024","title":{"rendered":"WORLD NO.1 MATT EBDEN MAKES PROMISING START AT WIMBLEDON 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Savouring the moment is the focus for Matt Ebden at Wimbledon this year.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The 36-year-old from Perth is competing\u00a0at the prestigious grass-court Grand Slam for the first time as the world\u2019s top-ranked doubles player.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTo be the No.1 player in the world in the draw is very cool,\u201d Ebden told\u00a0<em>tennis.com.au<\/em>\u00a0after completing a first-round men\u2019s doubles win alongside Indian Rohan Bopanna today.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s something we aspire to our life whole and career. You\u2019re constantly pushing, climbing, evaluating, reviewing and improving. Now to be able to sit there at the top of the mountain and enjoy it for a moment, it\u2019s kind of nice.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Since switching his focus to full-time doubles in 2022, Ebden has enjoyed a meteoric rise up the ATP Tour rankings.<\/p>\n<p>He was the world No.31\u00a0when he won the Wimbledon men\u2019s doubles title with compatriot Max Purcell in 2022 and had improved to world No.16 when\u00a0he progressed to the semifinals the following year alongside Bopanna.<\/p>\n<p>Now sitting at No.1, Ebden returns to Wimbledon as the first top-ranked Australian\u00a0men\u2019s doubles player since Todd Woodbridge 23 years earlier.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think as I got more into my 30s I started to take stock and started to make sure I enjoyed things a lot more,\u201d said the enduring Ebden, who contested his first Wimbledon in 2010.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s an important part of life, being grateful for what you\u2019re doing and what you have. Then also remembering to celebrate and savour those moments.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Originally scheduled to face French combination Adrian Mannarino and\u00a0<span class=\"first-name\">Giovanni\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"last-name\">Mpetshi Perricard in their first-round match today, Ebden and Bopanna discovered during their warm-up they would play an alternate team instead.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was a whirlwind,\u201d Ebden explained, as their coaches chased information on who would replace the French pair in the draw.<\/p>\n<p>The second seeds and reigning Australian Open champions ended up facing a Dutch duo, world No.78\u00a0<span class=\"last-name\">Sander Arends and world No.56 Robin Haase.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey are very accomplished doubles players, so I don\u2019t know if our draw got easier or tougher,\u201d Ebden said. \u201cThen dealing with the rain delays too, it was a tricky day.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Yet Ebden and Bopanna handled these challenges with aplomb, carving out a\u00a07-5 6-4 victory to making a winning start to their campaign.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Savouring the moment is the focus for Matt Ebden at Wimbledon this year. The 36-year-old from Perth is competing\u00a0at the prestigious grass-court Grand Slam for the first time as the world\u2019s top-ranked doubles player. \u201cTo be the No.1 player in the world in the draw is very cool,\u201d Ebden told\u00a0tennis.com.au\u00a0after completing a first-round men\u2019s doubles [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6414,"featured_media":19745,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6414"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19744"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19744\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}