Doubles Take: The Miami Open action kicks off

Doubles Take looks at the first big tournament of the year on US soil, the Miami Open.

Obviously, a lot has changed in the world since the last time the Miami Open, the joint ATP/WTA event, was held in 2019.

For one, the defending champions on the men’s side, Bob and Mike Bryan, won’t be going for a record-extending seventh title as they retired last year. And in the past few months, multiple partner switches have been made on the ATP Tour. Wesley Koolhof, who reached the ’19 final with singles standout Stefanos Tsitsipas and the winner of the 2020 ATP Finals with Nikola Mektic, is now playing with Lukasz Kubot.

While that new pairing has gotten off to a slow start, that’s been the complete opposite for Mektic, who’s playing with his fellow Croat, Mate Pavic. That team, seeded second in Miami, has won three titles already this year and just dropped a final in Dubai.

Given their form, they’re in strong position for a run to the final, even with the seventh seeds and last year’s Australian Open winners Joe Salisbury and Rajeev Ram; the third-seeded duo of Horacio Zeballos and Marcel Granollers; and Pierre-Hugues Herbert and Nicolas Mahut, the eighth seeds, lurking in their half of the draw.

The top portion is where things get a little trickier. Juan Sebastian Cabal and Robert Farah, the top seeds, are coming off the title in Dubai. However, their quarter is filled with dangerous floaters, such as Henri Kontinen and Edouard Roger-Vasselin. Should they reach the last eight, the Colombians could see Jamie Murray and Bruno Soares, the sixth seeds who reunited this year and already have a title under their belts.

The fourth seeds are Filip Polasek and Ivan Dodig, the front-runners for the feel-good story of the year with their run to the Australian Open title, given that Polasek was off the tour for five years at one point. Koolhof and Kubot are the sixth seeds and could meet Polasek and Dodig in the quarters, but both have huge obstacles in the way before that could happen. The six unseeded teams in that section are all capable of deep run at the tournament, including young singles stars Felix Auger-Aliassime and Hubert Hurkacz, the most recent Masters 1000 champions.

On the women’s side, the defending champions are back. In 2019, Elise Mertens and Aryna Sabalenka surprisingly completed the “Sunshine Double” in Miami after shocking the field in Indian Wells. The singles standouts would go on to win the US Open that summer, and this year, they picked up a second major together in Melbourne.

Mertens and Sabalenka, who are winding down their partnership as they intend to focus on singles, kick off their campaign against a couple of players who they’ll try to emulate in that discipline: former world No. 1s Simona Halep and Angelique Kerber. They’re drawn to face the sixth seeds, Yifan Xu and Shuai Zhang, in the quarterfinals.

The top half of the draw also features the fifth seeds, Ena Shibahara and Shuko Aoyama, two-time titlists already in 2021. They had a double-digit winning streak to start the year before it came crashing to a halt at the Australian Open against Mertens and Sabalenka. Timea Babos and Veronika Kudermetova are the fourth seeds, and could potentially face Ashleigh Barty and Jennifer Brady in the second round.

Barbora Krejcikova and Katerina Siniakova, two-time major champions and this year’s Melbourne finalists, are the second seeds and headline the bottom half of the draw. However, a trip to the final is far from guaranteed with potential dangers early on. In the second round, they’d face the winner of the Nadiia Kichenok/Raluca Olaru-Coco Gauff/Caty McNally match. The former is coming off a title in St. Petersburg, while the young Americans have been tearing it up since they hit the tour.

2020 French Open finalists Alexa Guarachi and Desirae Krawczyk are the seventh seeds and in that quarter. That pair has been winning titles and reaching finals—together and apart—for weeks now. Nicole Melichar and Demi Schuurs, the third seeds, appear to have a fairly easy run until at least the quarters, where they could meet Hayley Carter and Luisa Stefani, the eighth seeds.

Miami has long been a difficult tournament for any team to win and this year’s edition won’t be an exception to that, proving to be a constant in a sea of change.