Heliövaara eyes world No. 1 tennis ranking on birthday

Finnish tennis player Harri Heliövaara has a dream scenario for his 37th birthday on Thursday: a French Open semifinal match that could clinch him the world number one doubles ranking for the first time. Heliövaara and his British partner Henry Patten, seeded second, are set to face an unseeded duo in their semifinal. The Dutch-French pairing of Sander Arends and David Pel or Quentin Halys and Pierre-Hugues Herbert have never reached this stage of a Grand Slam tournament together.

Despite this being Heliövaara and Patten's first semifinal at the French Open, they have previously won the Australian Open and Wimbledon. The pair, who have been playing together for about three years, demonstrated strong form in their quarterfinal victory, defeating India's Sriram Balaji Narayanaswamy and Brazil's Marcelo Demoliner 6-3, 6-4. Heliövaara described their performance as being at their best, with effective serving and returning that kept pressure on their opponents.

This potential rise to world number one mirrors Heliövaara's situation exactly one year ago. He could have become only the second Finn, after Henri Kontinen in 2017, to reach the top of the world rankings on Wednesday, had the top-seeded pair of Marcel Granollers and Horacio Zeballos lost their quarterfinal match. Granollers and Zeballos advanced to the semifinals despite a brief challenge in the second set.

Heliövaara and Patten have enjoyed a successful start to the year, winning four ATP tour titles. Their only significant setback was an early exit in the third round of the Australian Open. The semifinal appearance guarantees the pair 150,000 euros, with the champions set to receive 600,000 euros.

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Today we did what we are best at. We served and returned well, and the pressure was nicely on the other side of the court. Right at the end there was one slip, but we could afford it because we had played so well up to that point.