Team to Watch: Sander Gille and Joran Vliegen

Over the past two seasons, the Belgian duo of Sander Gille and Joran Vliegen has won four titles on the ATP Tour, with its most recent victory coming in Kazakhstan in November.

They’ve actually been successful for a much longer period than that. Having won titles together at the Futures, Challenger and ATP levels, Gille and Vliegen will look to take their next big steps at the Masters 1000 and Grand Slam events in 2021.

The countrymen first experienced victory together back in 2013, when they won a Futures title at home in Belgium. Over the next several seasons, they worked their way up the rankings at a steady pace, with consistent results, at the lower levels of the men’s game. In 2016, Gille and Vliegen notched their most impressive season at that point in their careers as they won 10 titles during the year between Futures and Challengers. Seven more followed in both 2017 and ’18 as they became one of the more prolific teams in the men’s game.

All of that winning set the stage for the summer of 2019, when the years of grinding away paid off. Unseeded at the Swedish Open, the Belgians battled through to take the title. Their momentum carried over to the next week in Gstaad, Switzerland, where they won again.

A bid for a third title on the trot was stopped in the Kitzbuhel, Austria, final, but they added another victory later in the year in Zhuhai, China.

2020 got off to a solid start before the shutdown, with two semifinal appearances in their first several tournaments. Vliegen and Gille entered the “bubble” in New York when play resumed and experienced their best Grand Slam run to date with a quarterfinal finish.

Having gotten a taste of playing deep into a major now, the Belgian duo will be out for more late-draw appearances at the game’s premier events in 2021. And with all the winning they’ve done over the years, a breakthrough at the Masters and Grand Slams seems like the logical next step.