Joe Salisbury and Rajeev Ram win ITF World Champions Award for second consecutive year
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Joe Salisbury and doubles partner Rajeev Ram have been named ITF World Champions for the second year in a row following another standout season together on the ATP Tour.
As a duo, they have now become the third men’s pair to win an ITF World Champion award on more than one occasion, while Salisbury becomes the first Brit to win more than one ITF World Champion Award across all categories.
This achievement comes just days after British wheelchair tennis star and world No.1 Alfie Hewett was crowned ITF World Champion for the first time in his career, off the back of an incredible season on the UNIQLO Wheelchair Tennis Tour.
Following a stellar end to the 2023 season, the British, American duo hit form at the perfect time in what was their fifth season competing as a partnership.
Their historical accomplishment at the US Open, saw Salisbury and Ram seal their third consecutive title at Flushing Meadows. In doing so, the duo became the first doubles partnership in the Open Era to win three US Open men’s doubles titles on the bounce, with no other pair having achieved such a feat since 1912.
"I think it's just this partnership - it's really special" Salisbury said in his on-court interview after the US Open final. "It's been five years and we've got pretty close especially on the court. We just know we're going to give it our all, we're going to compete hard and fight hard and do our best until the very end”.
From then on, Salisbury and Ram proved a tough team to beat, as they won an impressive 17 of their last 19 matches of the season, with the pair heading into the year-end championships in great stead.
The Nitto ATP Finals saw Salisbury and Ram cap off the season in perfect style, as they sealed back-to-back Nitto ATP Finals with a victory over Marcel Granollers and Horacio Zeballos in the final – extending their winning streak in Turin to 10 matches.
Elsewhere on the tour, the pair also picked up an additional two ATP-tour level titles in Lyon and Vienna, taking their total title count as a partnership to 13.
With the world No.4's gearing up for their sixth season together, it's safe to say we could be in for another ground breaking year from the British, American duo.
