If this proves to be Salisbury and Skupski’s last match together, as is expected, then their year-long partnership ended in a familiar feeling of disappointment in a major final, having also been beaten in the French Open and US Open title matches.<\/p>\n
Horacio Zeballos and Marcel Granollers took them down in both Grand Slam finals, and in the Wimbledon quarter-finals.<\/p>\n
“We’ve had some great times, we’ve had some tough times,” Salisbury said after their latest defeat on a big stage.<\/p>\n
This time the British pair faced a team they had beaten in the round-robin stage, but they were wary that Patten and 36-year-old Heliovaara were off their game on that occasion and expected a greater test in the final.<\/p>\n
That is how it played out.<\/p>\n
After the first 11 games went with serve, big-hitting from Patten and a Salisbury double fault put Heliovaara and Patten on the brink of the opening set, which was secured when Skupski’s volley on the stretch found the net.<\/p>\n
The decisive break in the second set came in game six when Skupski’s serve gave way, a fizzing forehand from Heliovaara on break point too hot to put back in play.<\/p>\n
Salisbury has twice been a champion at this event alongside American Rajeev Ram, but this was not to be his and Skupski’s day.<\/p>\n
Patten began the week by saying his engagement was “so much more important” than the outcome on court, but he got to experience the best of both worlds.<\/p>\n
Back-to-back aces from Patten clinched the title, before he drew a diamond ring and a love heart on a courtside TV camera, a perfect week complete.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If this proves to be Salisbury and Skupski’s last match together, as is expected, then their year-long partnership…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":288649,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":{"0":"post-288648","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288648\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/288649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}