Doubles Take: Rounding up Paris & Zhuhai

It’s a tale of contrasts for the two victorious teams in this week’s Doubles Take.

ANOTHER MASTERFUL PERFORMANCE

When you’re hitting shots like this…

…odds are it’s going to be a pretty good day.

That was the case for Marcelo Melo as he and Lukasz Kubot won their third ATP Masters 1000 event of 2017 in Paris. The duo defeated Ivan Dodig (Melo’s former partner) and Marcel Granollers 7-6 (3), 3-6, (10-6) in the last regular-season tournament of the year.

Melo and Kubot became a dedicated partnership this year and the results have been quite impressive. The veterans reached the final at three of the year’s first four ATP Masters tournaments, and won two of them—in Miami and Madrid.

After a surprising early-round loss at the French Open, Kubot and Melo hit the grass and put on one of the year’s most dominating displays. They went undefeated on the turf, culminating in their first Grand Slam title at Wimbledon.

The summer hard-court season didn’t go as planned, but they’ve been playing well this fall, reaching yet another ATP Masters final in Shanghai before winning Paris.

As for Dodig and Granollers, who clinched a spot in the Nitto ATP Finals earlier in the week, it’s been a solid fall season for them as well. Right before Paris, the team captured its second ATP 500-level event of the year in Basel.

FROM SIXTH TO FIRST

Ying-Ying Duan and Xinyun Han were the final pairing in the six-team field at the WTA Elite Trophy tournament in Zhuhai, China.

At the end of the week, they were standing tall as the victors.

Duan and Han, both from China, went undefeated in the round-robin stage, which included a win over top seeds Raluca Olaru and Olga Savchuk, to claim a spot in the final. There, they defeated countrywomen Jingjing Lu and Shuai Zhang, 6-2, 6-1.

It’s the first career doubles title for both Duan and Han.

A LOOK AHEAD

The men have the week off before the Nitto ATP Finals gets underway in London. Stay tuned for a preview.

For the women, the Fed Cup final between the United States and Belarus will be happening this weekend. With Bethanie Mattek-Sands out, the highest-ranked doubles player for the U.S. is CoCo Vandeweghe. For Belarus, Lidziya Marozava is the team’s top doubles player. It would be somewhat surprising if the tie came down to the doubles match, but shocking the world has been stock and trade for Belarus during its run.

Follow Van on Twitter: @Van_Sias