Patten, 28, is a late bloomer who studied finance at college in the USA.
In 2016, he spent the summer season break from his research engaged on the outside courts at Wimbledon as an information analyst for IBM.
Heliovarra, 35, stopped enjoying professionally in 2013 due to an autoimmune illness that impacts his backbone.
“I by no means actually aspired to be an expert tennis participant as a junior or once I was at college. I simply saved doing fairly nicely and it snowballed,” Patten mentioned.
“And Harri thought that was it for him when he stopped enjoying singles. He was working on the airport, had a stint in finance then got here again to the game.
“Now we’re each very centered on tennis however we’re multi-faceted in our backgrounds.”
Patten says it appears like he has recognized Heliovaara for years, though they solely began spending time collectively from April.
Their friendship was additional strengthened when Patten headed to Helsinki for per week of coaching in October, staying with Heliovaara, his spouse and two young children of their household dwelling.
After the intense enterprise of coaching, Patten was eager to study and expertise as a lot in regards to the Finnish lifestyle as he may.
Common journeys across the capital metropolis to see the vacationer sights had been adopted by some dwelling cooking by Heliovaara – together with his speciality dish of reindeer stew.
“He informed me about midway by way of that he was cooking it, so I used to be a little bit nervous in regards to the end result,” laughs Patten.
“It was excellent. I used to be very complimentary and he was very complimentary about his personal cooking.
“I do not know what that claims about him however he appeared to suppose he had executed an excellent job.”
That sense of humour, alongside a deep mutual respect, underpins a steady partnership that they hope will give them a head begin in opposition to a number of latest males’s pairings which have come collectively for this season.
The targets for the brand new season naturally begin with one other Grand Slam title in Melbourne, earlier than a concerted effort for the world’s prime 10 aided by larger consistency on the ATP Tour.
“Everybody else is scrambling a little bit bit and never realizing how these partnerships are going to go,” Patten mentioned.
“Ours is a partnership which we all know works and may be very efficient.
“We’re trying ahead to kicking on. We’ve got rather a lot to realize.”
A model of this text was revealed on 16 January 2025