Manchester, Great Britain, 18 September 2023 | Matt Ebden

Matt Ebden played a starring role for the Australian Davis Cup team in Manchester, winning all three doubles matches he contested alongside Max Purcell. This helped Australia qualify for November’s Final 8 stage. The 35-year-old from Perth shares an exclusive insight into the team’s successful week …

It feels amazing, it truly does. I’m not sure there’s too many better feelings than performing well and fighting and winning with your team-mates and for your country. It’s extra special. It’s different. We rely on each other so much out there. We all give our best and can’t win without each other.

It always gives you great confidence when you perform well in key moments. It’s about delivering on the biggest stages, in the biggest tournaments and events in the world, and it doesn’t get any bigger than Davis Cup. I love it. I love those extra heightened feelings and extra challenges. I really enjoy the battle.

We definitely had a tough start to the week being down 0-2 to Great Britain, but we knew we had to win that doubles point to give ourselves a chance to qualify later in the week and we were able to do that.

It was tough again the following day, we went down 0-1 against France after the first singles. So from then on for the rest of the week, we were just one loss away from being eliminated.

It was really backs-against-the-wall kind of stuff. I think we all definitely took inspiration from Rochey (Tony Roche) and Lleyton (Hewitt) and fought and clawed our way back with all the wins after that. It was a huge team effort.

It felt very natural to team up with Max again and it turned out really well, winning three from three. Max is concentrating more on his singles schedule this year, which is the reason we aren’t playing together on the tour. I needed a full-time dedicated partner to go for the top of the world rankings in doubles and the top of the team race rankings for the end-of-year ATP World Tour Finals.

> READ: Ebden sets sight on rising to world No.1

From the very first practice set Max and I played together after arriving in Manchester, we hit the ground running. We previously played over one year together and went through some of the biggest moments and tournaments as well as Davis Cup challenges, so there’s nothing that can trump that experience and history as a team. You don’t lose that, and we will always know we play very well together, so it gives us great confidence and incredible belief always no matter what.

After beating Switzerland to secure our ticket to Malaga for the Davis Cup Finals in November, it was great to celebrate with the team. There was lots of singing and cheering in our team locker room, followed by a big celebratory dinner to mark the end of a successful week.

I’m on my way home to Perth now. I haven’t been home since April, so it’s definitely been a long trip. But it’s been an awesome few months with some great results at the Slams and then a fun week at Davis Cup to top it off.

The Shanghai Masters are the next tournament on my schedule, followed by the Paris Masters. Hopefully I’ll get the chance to compete at the ATP World Tour Finals in Turin, before heading across to Spain for the Davis Cup Finals.

There are plenty of big events ahead and lots of work still to do, but I definitely can’t wait to spend some time at home with family and friends first.

Book online, play today: Visit play.tennis.com.au to get out on court and have some fun!