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Henry Patten and Harri Heliovaara have won Wimbledon and managed to concuss each other in their first six months as a doubles team, and now a deep US Open run is their goal.<\/b><\/p>\n
Concussion injuries happen frequently in contact sports such as rugby and football, but it is certainly not the case in tennis.<\/p>\n
Yet such a blow is exactly what Britain’s Patten and Finland’s Heliovaara suffered when they clashed heads in a men’s doubles match in Montreal last month.<\/p>\n
Despite the injury, the pair are back in action and bidding for more Grand Slam success in New York, where they have already won through two rounds without dropping a set.<\/p>\n
“It was unusual and now we can just about see the funny side of it,” Patten told BBC Sport, as he reflected on the banging of heads.<\/p>\n
He added, jokingly: “One of the reasons I play tennis is because it’s not a contact sport, I’m soft.”<\/p>\n
Patten and Heliovaara were 4-2 ahead in a first-set tie-break against American Ben Shelton and Kazakhstan’s Alexander Bublik in Montreal when the accident that left them sidelined for a few days took place.<\/p>\n
“We were feeling pretty good until Ben Shelton put up, to be honest, not a very good lob and it was somehow straight down the middle of us,” Patten said.<\/p>\n
“Somehow we perfectly smacked head to head which left us both with a mild concussion, which was a first for both of us and doesn’t happen very much in tennis.”<\/p>\n
They played on for another 15 minutes, losing the tie-break before deciding to call it a day and retire from the match.<\/p>\n
“I immediately felt quite nauseous, and balance was a little bit off balance,” Patten said.<\/p>\n
Finland’s Heliovaara added: “After 15 minutes or so you could feel this was not a good thing that happened. It took me more than a week to feel close to normal and almost two weeks to be sure I’m finally back to 100%.”<\/p>\n
Patten and Heliovaara, who only joined forces in April, are the sixth seeds at this fortnight’s US Open, but they were unseeded when they won a thrilling Wimbledon final<\/a> in July.<\/p>\n They will face 11th seeds Wesley Koolhof of the Netherlands and Croatia’s Nikola Mektic in the third round on Monday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n