Julian Knowle

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Julian Knowle (born 29 April 1974) is an Austrian male professional tennis player. Being a born left-hander Knowle is one of now only few on the ATP Tour who plays his forehand, backhand and even volleys double-handed. He is Austria's most successful doubles player in history by reaching no. 6 in the ATP doubles ranking in January 2008; this attribute he has to share now with Jürgen Melzer, who reached no. 6 in the ATP doubles ranking in September 2010.

Knowle was a successful player on the ATP Challenger Series, winning the Challenger tournaments in Kyoto (1999), Caracas (2001), Graz (2001) and Andrezieux (2002) and reaching the finals in Yokohama (2000), Bristol (2000), Besançon (2000) and Graz (2003). He also won several Futures tournaments. Knowle's best ATP singles ranking was no. 86 in July 2002. He appeared last in the main draw of a singles tournament in the Graz Challenger in 2005 where he reached the quarter final.

Knowle reached his first of two Grand Slam finals at Wimbledon in 2004 together with Nenad Zimonjić of Serbia. Eventually the team was defeated in four sets by Jonas Björkman and Todd Woodbridge. The only Austrian to reach a final at Wimbledon before was Georg von Metaxa in doubles in 1938 where he too lost.

In 2005 Knowle teamed up with Czech Petr Pála for several months without being able to continue his successful run with Zimonjić. This changed when he formed a team with fellow Austrian player and left-hander Jürgen Melzer, joining him throughout...
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