Wimbledon | Patten and Heliovaara’s fairytale — from crunching numbers to winning tie-breakers

Patten and Heliovaara's Wimbledon doubles win is a remarkable fairytale of two unlikely champions in tennis.

As far as sporting fairytales go, Henry Patten’s and Harri Heliovaara’s will rank high up.

The Brit and the Finn, who teamed up only in April and were competing in just their second Major as a pair, won the Wimbledon men’s doubles crown late on Saturday with a nerve-wracking 6-7(7), 7-6(8), 7-6(9) victory over the accomplished Australian duo of Max Purcell and Jordan Thompson.

Patten and Heliovaara dumped out three top-10 seeds en route and saved three championship points against Purcell and Thompson, the 15th seeds.

Scratch doubles pairs that find quick success abound in tennis. But what makes the Patten-Heliovaara combine remarkable is that they had hardly played the sport full time.

Patten, 28, had never won a main draw match at SW19 and the longest he had stayed at the Wimbledon park area was while working for IBM in 2016 and ’17 collecting stats on the many outside courts.

“My first job at Wimbledon was doing the stats for IBM, which I guess got me familiar with the grounds,” Patten said after the triumph. “It might have given me some advantage. I don’t know.

“It was basically a summer job for two weeks. It paid pretty well, but it was hard work. Don’t get me wrong, I’m quite glad I’m playing now instead of doing the stats.”