Todd Woodbridge

Todd Andrew Woodbridge, OAM (born 2 April 1971) is an Australian broadcaster and former professional tennis player. During his playing career, he formed multiple Grand-Slam winning doubles partnerships with Mark Woodforde (together, nicknamed "The Woodies") and later Jonas Björkman.

He is among the most successful doubles players of all time, having won 16 Grand Slam men's doubles titles (nine Wimbledons, three US Opens, three Australian Opens and one French Open), and a further six Grand Slam mixed doubles titles (three US Opens, one French Open, one Wimbledon, one Australian Open). Additionally, he was a gold medalist with Woodforde at the 1996 Summer Olympics to complete a career Golden Slam. In total he has won 83 ATP doubles titles. Woodbridge reached the World No. 1 doubles ranking in July 1992. ^{[citation needed]}

Woodbridge was awarded the Medal of the Order of the Australia in the 1997 Australia Day Honours "for service to sport as gold medallist at the Atlanta Olympic Games, 1996". In 2002, he was inducted into the Australian Institute of Sport 'Best of the Best'. In 2014, alongside Woodforde, the International Tennis Federation (ITF) presented him with its highest accolade, the Philippe Chatrier Award, for his contributions to tennis.

In juniors, Woodbridge made the finals of the Junior Australian Open in 1987 and 1989, and Wimbledon in 1989.

He is best known as one of the top doubles players in the world for most of the 1990s and into the early 2000s (decade). His primary doubles partnerships were first with fellow Australian Mark Woodforde and later with Swede Jonas Björkman. Woodbridge and Woodforde are often referred to as "The Woodies" in the tennis world. Woodbridge also had a career high singles ranking of 19 after reaching the semifinals of Wimbledon in 1997, beating Michael Chang, Marcos Ondruska, Alex Rădulescu, Patrick Rafter and Nicolas Kiefer before losing to Pete Sampras. He did however have the distinction of being one of only seven players to beat Sampras at Wimbledon, knocking him out in the first round in 1989 (Sampras's first ever Wimbledon match). Woodbridge is also notable for being one of only 17 players in the Open Era (as of 2017) to achieve a triple bagel, against Johan Örtegren in qualifying at the 2001 Wimbledon Championships.

The Woodies won a record 61 ATP doubles titles as a team, including 11 Grand Slam events. Woodforde and Woodbridge won a gold medal at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, and reached the final to win a silver medal at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. In the fourth set tie-breaker against Canadians Sébastien Lareau and Daniel Nestor, Woodbridge served a double fault to lose the match.

After Woodforde retired from the tour in 2000, Woodbridge established a partnership with Björkman that resulted in five Grand Slam titles in four years. At the end of 2004, Björkman ended his partnership with Woodbridge. According to an interview Woodbridge granted to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Björkman wanted him to play more weeks on the tour, but Woodbridge wanted to limit his time away from his family as much as possible. Woodbridge then took on India's Mahesh Bhupathi as his new partner, who had just been dumped by Belarusian Max Mirnyi. Coincidentally, Björkman and Mirnyi ended up partnering together.

Woodbridge announced his retirement at the 2005 Wimbledon Championships after 17 years as a tennis professional and 83 ATP tournament doubles titles, an all-time record at the time now surpassed by the Bryan brothers. He was a member of the Australian Davis Cup Team, playing the most ties (32) of any player.^{[citation needed]} According to the ATP website, he finished his career with US$10,095,245 in prize money. ^{[citation needed]}