The top doubles players tend to stick with their partners for a long time–at the very least, through an entire season. But for all sorts of reasons, even the best players sometimes switch partners more quickly. Marc Lopez plays with Rafael Nadal sometimes, but more frequently this year with Marcel Granollers. Radek Stepanek and Leander Paes, this year’s top teams, have both played events in 2012 with others. Sometimes pairings are simply a matter of convenience.
All this can lead to some oddities in the doubles race to London. Right now, Lopez and Granollers are 8th in the race, in position to qualify for the tour finals. In 10th are Lopez and Nadal! Sure, that’s on the strength of a single tournament win, but a couple more titles at Masters events and Lopez/Nadal would find themselves in the running for the tour finals as well.
Marc Lopez’s double-dipping is unusually successful, but not that unusual. Sam Querrey is in the top 32 with two different partners (John Isner and James Blake) and Paes twice appears in the top 35 (with Stepanek and Janko Tipsarevic).
It’s early still in the 2012 race, and by September, these oddities may have faded away. But it’s tempting to wonder: Could a player qualify for London with two different partners?
Let’s take the case of Lopez. With two more Masters-or-better titles, he and Nadal would have at least 3,000 points. That would’ve been enough to qualify them for the finals last year. And if Lopez plays every other event with Granollers and puts up a decent showing in the remaining slams, it’s very possible that the Lopez/Granollers team would reach 3,000 points as well.
That was easy! If you’re a world-class doubles player, take a bit of good luck on the court (wins!) and a bit of bad luck off the court (partner injuries or drama), and you’ve got yourself doubly qualified.
To consider another example: Paes and Stepanek are, on the strength of their hot start, already qualified in all but name. If Stepanek got hurt, or went on a tear in singles and had to cut back on his doubles schedule, Paes would have more than half the season left to start over with a new partner. (Or play more with Tipsarevic, with whom he has already won a few matches.) The new pairing would have to gel quickly, but if it did, you’ve got yourself two Paes’s in London.
Now, if anybody started televising some doubles, the race would get really exciting.