Joe Salisbury & Rajeev Ram Retirement Special

Dan Kiernan (0:00)

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Welcome to episode 304 of Control the Controllables. And it's been a little bit of a while since we've brought you a CTC short. But I think this one's important. It's an important tribute to two brilliant tennis players, brilliant people and who have both had a fantastic career. And that is Rajeev Ram and Joe Salisbury. And they both have retired in the last couple of weeks. We saw one of them coming, the Rajeev Ram, we saw he had his tribute to him after they made the semi-finals at the US Open this year. And his former actually college coach, Craig Tiley, who's now the CEO of the USDA, was there to present him. He had his family, he had friends there, and there was a great event. And then Joe Salisbury, who's significantly younger than Rajeev, you know, I don't think we saw that one quite coming. And that's in a lot more of a low-key way, just a couple of days ago, he put an Instagram post to say that also the time has come for him. Now Rajeev and Joe have been a big part of the podcast over the years, you know, they've both kindly come on in quite the early days as well.

They've been very kind with their time with the podcast and they've been great role models to many. And we want to celebrate their careers a little bit. We want to bring back some clips from their episodes with Control the Controllables. And like I say, just to give a little tribute to a pair that, and individuals, they've won six major titles, each four on the men's side together.

They won the Australian Open in 2020, the US Open, then the three-peat, 21, 22, 23 And went close this year, semifinals, from kind of nowhere. I don't think either, well, Rajeev hadn't played a whole lot in the last 12 months. Joe took a mental health break and took some time before coming back in Monte Carlo earlier this year. And the results hadn't really said, this is a team that can push for the US Open. But obviously, form is temporary, class is permanent, and they certainly showed that. They both also have two mixed doubles titles, Joe with Desiree Kravchek, who we've spoken to again on the podcast after she's won with Neil Skupski. But people forget that also her and Joe won those titles in 2021 at Roland Garros and US Open. And Joe became only the second ever British man to achieve world number one. And he held that position for 23 weeks. There has been more players that have done that since. Rajeev won his two with Barbora Krejcikova, the Australian Open in 2019 and 2021 And he also, we shouldn't forget the two silver medals that Rajeev Ram picked up alongside Venus Williams in Rio in 2016 And then in the men's doubles with Austin Krejcik only a couple of years ago in Paris. And you know, very much at the kind of twilight of his career Rajeev picked up all of these incredible results. He was also 56 in the world at his highest in singles. And you know, we'll explore that I think in the little clip that we'll show as well, you know, especially with so much being said about singles, doubles, and just tennis in general these last few weeks. Rajeev also became the seventh man to reach 500 to a level doubles wins. He finished his career with a doubles win loss record of 511 to 368 It's a lot of matches, 32 ATP titles, 9 Masters titles, and yeah, what careers they've had. And the first clip that I want to share with you was from a few years ago when I spoke to Joe. And I always thought it was interesting with Joe because the first time I saw him, it was in Felix store. I was with Josh Ward-Hibbett and actually Lloyd Glasspool, the first tournament I did after Lloyd came back from US College, I want to say 2015 And it was at Felix store, first round qualies, Josh Ward-Hibbett played against Joe Salisbury. And I saw him and I thought, this guy is athletic, this guy can really bully, this guy can seriously move.