Baseline Awards of 2019: Most lethal dual threats

After winning three titles and landing a spot in the 2018 WTA Finals field, Elise Mertens informed her partner, Dutch doubles specialist Demi Schuurs, that she wanted to focus more on her burgeoning singles career.

Intending to scale back her time on the doubles court in 2019, Mertens played her first event of the year at the Australian Open with fellow singles standout Aryna Sabalenka. The pair made it to the third round, along the way defeating Schuurs and Bethanie Mattek-Sands.

They didn’t play doubles again until the Premier Mandatory tournament in Indian Wells, Calif. There, the contenders for the singles crown caught fire.

Beating two Grand Slam title-winning teams in Timea Babos/Kristina Mladenovic and Barbora Krejcikova/Katerina Siniakova, the Belgian-Ukrainian duo won its first championship together. That run of form carried over to the next big event on the calendar, the Miami Open. There, Mertens and Sabalenka completed the second half of the “Sunshine Double” sweep, topping more major winners.

When the calendar turned to the clay- and grass-court stretches, the two saved their best for the biggest events as they advanced to the semifinals at the French Open and the quarterfinals at Wimbledon.

At their best on hard courts in singles and doubles, they proved how formidable a team they could be at the year’s last major, the US Open. In New York, they only dropped one set on their way to the final. The title match saw them take on a couple of more singles stars in Victoria Azarenka and Ashleigh Barty. In the end, it was Mertens and Sabalenka who prevailed in straight sets, giving them each their first Grand Slam title.

The pair reached one more title bout on the year in Wuhan, China, and qualified for the WTA Finals. They didn’t get out of the round-robin portion of the event, but if they decide to team up next year, they could make a run for the tournament again—as they try to get there in singles, too. **