Doubles Take: Paris saw shocks, expected triumphs

The second Grand Slam of the year has just wrapped. Doubles Take looks back at the tournament and the teams that came out on top.

NO SEEDING, NO PROBLEM

Since 2017, the team of Kevin Krawietz and Andreas Mies have won seven clay-court titles at the ATP Challenger level, including two this spring. They also celebrated their first triumph on the main tour this year, taking the New York Open on hard courts.

All solid results, but who could have known they would be bound for Grand Slam glory in 2019?

In an upset-filled draw, the duo was the last team standing at the French Open, knocking off another unseeded pairing, Frenchmen Jeremy Chardy and Fabrice Martin, in straight sets in the final.

Krawietz and Mies—who took out last year’s finalists Oliver Marach and Mate Pavic, among others—became the first all-German team to win the doubles title at Roland Garros in the Open Era.

ANOTHER MAJOR MILESTONE

Last year, the reunion tour for Kristina Mladenovic and Timea Babos got off to a perfect start as they won the Australian Open for their first major title together. They managed to stretch the Slam match-win streak to nine before being upset in the French Open quarterfinals by Eri Hozumi and Makoto Ninomiya in one of the biggest shocks of the tournament.

This year, there were no such letdowns.

The second seeds beat the unseeded team of Yingying Duan and Saisai Zheng in straight sets in the final. On their way to victory, Babos and Mladenovic were pushed to the limit in the third round and quarterfinals, but won rather handily in their other matches.

For Mladenovic, there was a double bonus: Aside from winning the title once again in front of the home crowd, she now sits atop the women’s doubles rankings.

MORE MIXED FORTUNES

Coming into the tournament with some momentum, the men’s and women’s events didn’t work out as planned for Ivan Dodig and Latisha Chan as they were both knocked out of their respective draws earlier than expected.

Unseeded yet unbowed in the mixed competition, the two were evidently determined not to leave Paris empty-handed.

In a rematch of last year’s final, Chan and Dodig once again topped Gaby Dabrowski and Oliver Marach for their second mixed crown together. The two dominated from start to finish, winning every match in straights, including a rout of the top seeds Nicole Melichar and Bruno Soares in the semis.

Follow Van on Twitter: @Van_Sias