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The Sydney native Max Purcell had a rock-solid season behind him, winning seven Challenger doubles titles with Luke Saville from nine finals and cracking the top-80. In singles, the 21-year-old is current;y ranked 221st, his career-best year-end singles ranking that came after 37 Challenger victories, staying away from the Futures for the first time in a career.
Max finished the official season earlier than usual, working on his game on the practice court and entering the 2020 Australian Open wild card Play-off where he reached the final, losing to John-Patrick Smith and missing the opportunity to secure his debut at Majors.
Thus, Purcell will probably have to qualify for the main draw in Melbourne but he feels ready and confident for all the challenges at the moment, embracing a successful offseason and preparing to kick off the new season at Canberra Challenger.
In 2020, Max will try to enter the top-100 in singles and keep his high doubles ranking, seeking another consistent season and a chance to compete on the ATP level. "I took a couple of weeks off to finish the season instead of playing out the full year; I took some time to train a bit more.
I've been doing so much extra work in the gym, just running, with more time spent on the court; that's been a little bit of the difference. I've been conserving my energy really well and just switching on and switching off; I've played three sets and I still feel like I could play again, so that's really confidence-boosting.
I feel I'm moving forward well, I'm volleying well, I'm applying a lot of pressure and then I can also play from the back and defend when I need to. I feel like players are starting to struggle to know how to play me. I'm just feeling really well with the ball on the strings right now, and I feel I can do a lot with it.
Tennis is all about confidence, so as long as you can keep it run going, there's no reason why I can't keep doing well. 2019 was my most consistent year by far; I didn't have any drops in results or three or four weeks without winning a match.
I was still working on a lot, working on my body throughout it. I can only feel like 2020 will be bigger and better; I want to be able to, at some point, crack the top-100 and finish the year there. Also, the goal is to keep my doubles ranking where it is, at about 80th in the world.
I had to choose a few doubles-only weeks this year, which I don't regret, but I would have liked to have done more the singles side. Luke and myself are doing so well in doubles; we felt we might as well give the doubles side a little bit more of a crack.
And we got to our goal of getting into Wimbledon, in doubles main draw, so that was great. But you can get into all these doubles tournaments with your singles ranking, so I want to get my singles ranking up there, and then I won't even have to worry about the doubles ranking."