Doubles Take: Rounding up Beijing & Tokyo

Catch up on the action in Asia and take a look at the week ahead in Doubles Take.

AND THE WINNERS ARE…MCLACHLAN AND UCHIYAMA?

Among the 16 teams at this year’s Japan Open, four of them had won Grand Slams over the past two years, with three of those pairings among the top four seeds.

This tournament had a rematch of this year’s US Open finals—in the first round. That’s how deep the draw was.

Surely, it would be a Slam winner or an ATP Masters 1000 titlist coming through at the end of the week, right? Nope.

Wild card recipients Ben McLachlan and Yasutaka Uchiyama defeated last year’s Australian and US Open champions Jamie Murray and Bruno Soares in straight sets in the final. McLachlan and Uchiyama—each playing in their first career final— became the first Japanese players to win the title in 12 years.

ON CLOUD NINE

On one side, you had this year’s US Open champions, coming into the final of the China Open on a 17-match winning streak. On the other side of the net was a team that hadn’t been doing too shabby either, capturing titles in two of the three previous weeks.

In the end, something had to give.

Martina Hingis and Yung-Jan Chan captured their ninth title of the year, defeating Timea Babos and Andrea Hlavackova in straight sets in the final. It wasn’t an easy road to the title match for the top-seeded Hingis and Chan as they were pushed to the brink in the second round and the semifinals.

Perhaps these two teams could meet again in the WTA Finals as Babos and Hlavackova’s strong form of late has enabled them to qualify for the year-end event.

BACK WHERE IT ALL BEGAN

It was in China last year when Henri Kontinen and John Peers began their run that propelled them to the top of the doubles world. They reached the final of Shanghai before losing to John Isner and Jack Sock, then won Paris and the ATP World Tour Finals.

That form carried over into the beginning of 2017 as they captured their first Grand Slam title together in Australia.

The rest of this year has seen a lot of starts and stops, but they lived up to their billing as the top seeds at the China Open. Waiting for them in the final was their Shanghai conquerors from a year ago, Sock and Isner.

This time, it was Peers and Kontinen who came away with the victory, taking the title in a match tiebreak after the teams split sets.

The China Open is the third title of the year for the team.

A LOOK AHEAD

The men are playing their eighth ATP Masters 1000 event of the season in Shanghai this week. Top seeds Kontinen and Peers are definitely entering the tournament in fine fashion, coming off the China Open title. The second seeds are Lukasz Kubot and Marcelo Melo, and many of the top teams are there as jockeying for the ATP World Tour Finals heats up.

The women have three tournaments this week. At the Hong Kong Tennis Open, it’s the return of sister act Yung-Jan Chan and Hao-Ching Chan. The former partners are the top seeds at the tournament. In Tianjin, China, the top-seeded duo of Kateryna Bondarenko and Alla Kudryavtseva is already through to the quarterfinals.

Breaking away from Asia, in Linz Austria, Kiki Bertens and Johanna Larsson will be going for their third title of 2017 and ninth together in three years.

Follow Van on Twitter: @Van_Sias