Doubles Take: The ATP Finals

The ATP season wraps up, and a quick glance at the international team competitions for the men and women, all in this week’s Doubles Take.

A STELLAR FINISH

In round-robin play at the ATP Finals, the only team to go undefeated was the eighth-seeded pairing of Ryan Harrison and Michael Venus.

Four-time champs Bob and Mike Bryan only won one match.

Both alternate teams were forced to jump into group play as Pierre-Hugues Herbert/Nicolas Mahut, and Ivan Dodig/Marcel Granollers had to withdraw.

It looked like the last title of the year was up for grabs after the first few days. But in the end, it was the top two teams in the world who met in the final: Wimbledon champions Lukasz Kubot and Marcelo Melo versus Australian Open victors Henri Kontinen and John Peers.

Kontinen and Peers defended their title with a straight-sets triumph over this year’s title leaders, continuing their second-half surge.

At the start of 2017, it looked like the Finnish-Australian duo was on track for a history-making season. They ended 2016 with a flourish by reaching the finals in Shanghai, then winning the Paris Masters and the ATP Finals. A few months later, they captured the first Grand Slam men’s doubles title of their respective careers in Australia with a straight-sets win over the Bryans.

Then, nothing: From that Australian Open win through Wimbledon, the pair failed to make another final. Wimbledon marked the start of their turnaround, as they reached the semifinals there, before losing to Kubot and Melo in a five-set battle.

Kontinen and Peers re-entered the winner’s circle in Washington and then found more success after the US Open, taking the titles in Beijing and Shanghai.

In the Washington and Shanghai finals, they beat Kubot and Melo, as the two teams established themselves as rivals for the game’s most prestigious titles.

It was Kontinen and Peers who ended the year as they started it, with another huge win.

NEW & NOTES

While he didn’t come away with the first-place hardware at the end, the week was far from a loss for Melo. The veteran doubles star from Brazil finished the season as No. 1 in the world, and he and Kubot clinched the top spot in the team rankings.

A belated congratulations to the U.S. Fed Cup Team, which won its first Fed Cup title since 2000 with a 3-2 victory over Belarus in Minsk. The final came down to a live doubles rubber, which Shelby Rogers and CoCo Vandeweghe won over Aryna Sabalenka and Aliaksandra Sasnovich. It was the second tie in a row that Vandeweghe—undefeated in singles and doubles over the year in Fed Cup—played the role of closer, as she and Bethanie Mattek-Sands won a live rubber over the Czech Republic in the semifinals.

A LOOK AHEAD

The Davis Cup final between France and Belgium takes place this week. Herbert and Mahut have been named to the French squad, and would usually be considered heavy favorites against any combination Belgium could muster. However, if Herbert’s back is still bothering him and Belgium’s Davis Cup hero Steve Darcis plays doubles, the rubber could be a thrilling one.

Follow Van on Twitter: @Van_Sias