![\"Christian](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/harrison-skupski-january-2026.jpg\")
<\/p>\n ATP Tour
\n Could Harrison & Skupski be the new star doubles team of 2026?<\/p>\n
American-British duo pursuing breakthrough performance at Australian Open<\/p>\n
January 24, 2026<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Andrew Eichenholz\/ATP Tour<\/p>\n
Christian Harrison and Neal Skupski are playing their first season as a team.
\n By Andrew Eichenholz<\/p>\n
The beginning of the year is more than just the start of the season for some doubles players. It is a pivotal moment for the debut of new partnerships.<\/p>\n
One of the key new teams in 2026 is Christian Harrison<\/a> and Neal Skupski<\/a>, both of whom competed in the 2025 Nitto ATP Finals<\/a> with different partners \u2014 Harrison with Evan King<\/a> and Skupski with Joe Salisbury<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cReally happy with how things are progressing with Christian,\u201d Skupski said. \u201cChristian came to Baton Rouge for a week\u2019s training in the offseason, so that was the first step of getting to know each other a bit better on the tennis court, work on a few things together and just to make sure it wasn\u2019t out of the blue when we came together in Australia.\u201d<\/p>\n The partners decided to play United Cup<\/a>, which allowed them to train together in Perth despite competing for different countries.<\/p>\n \u201cThat was another great week of practice together. Adelaide was good, we got three matches in against good teams and then we\u2019ve come here with confidence,\u201d Skupski said. \u201cI think we\u2019re playing well. I think there are definitely areas to improve on, but it\u2019s a Grand Slam. It\u2019s too late to work on these things right now. <\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re just going to go with the flow, which seems to be working at the moment. We know each other\u2019s strengths, so we\u2019re trying to use them. But very happy with the first two rounds.\u201d<\/p>\n Harrison and Skupski made the Adelaide semi-finals in their first tournament together, only falling short to 2024 Nitto ATP Finals<\/a> champions Kevin Krawietz<\/a> and Tim Puetz<\/a>. The sixth seeds are through two rounds at the Australian Open<\/a> and will play Tallon Griekspoor<\/a> and Botic van de Zandschulp<\/a> for a place in the quarter-finals.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s nice that we\u2019ve been able to start out on the right foot. We put in a lot of practice time \u2014 as much as we could \u2014 considering we weren\u2019t going to spend a lot of time with each other until we got to the tournaments,\u201d Harrison said. \u201cBut it\u2019s nice that we\u2019ve been able to work through and figure out how our games are going to match up together.\u201d <\/p>\n Skupski explained that he and Harrison are still \u201clearning on the job\u201d and focusing on communicating well throughout and after matches. They have been \u201cvery open\u201d with one another to help expedite the process of growing as a team.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s something that I\u2019m very excited about this year,\u201d Skupski said. \u201cI think we can do a good job and we can be successful. It\u2019s the start of something hopefully over a long period of time. Looking forward to a long success with Christian. <\/p>\n Harrison said: \u201cThere are always nerves early on with a new partnership like that because you know both of you are accomplished and you just want to find the best way to make your team work as efficiently as it can.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve known each other for a long time, and look to build a good playing, off-court relationship together and just enjoy playing the tennis and the matches.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ATP Tour Could Harrison & Skupski be the new star doubles team of 2026? American-British duo pursuing breakthrough…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":255288,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-255287","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255287\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\u201cATP\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/atp-no-1-club-banner-article.jpg\")
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