MELBOURNE, Jan 31 – Fourth seeds Elise Mertens and Zhang Shuai won the Australian Open women’s doubles title on Saturday with a 7-6(4) 6-4 victory over Anna Danilina and Aleksandra Krunic, claiming their first Grand Slam trophy as a duo.<\/p>\n
The victory handed Mertens her sixth Grand Slam title while Zhang won her third but the triumph almost never happened, with the Belgian-Chinese pair forced to save three match points in the second round against teenagers Iva Jovic and Victoria Mboko.<\/p>\n
“It’s been quite a week so far,” said Mertens, who is set to move up to world number one in the doubles rankings.<\/p>\n
“I’m lost for words. In the second round of doubles, we had three match points against us. We kept on fighting, we kept on believing and we really grew as a team. Today, in the final, I’m happy that I served it out eventually.<\/p>\n
“It’s the first week that we’ve actually played together and what a result. It’s been amazing.”<\/p>\n
Danilina and Krunic had a superb start when they raced to a 4-1 lead in a gripping opening set but the momentum turned gradually as Mertens and Zhang clawed their way back, winning four games in a row.<\/p>\n
As Danilina and Krunic suddenly found themselves trailing, they responded with renewed composure, playing solidly from the baseline and showing sharp movement at the net.<\/p>\n
Holding their nerve under pressure, the pair secured two crucial games to stay alive in the set and successfully force a tiebreak.<\/p>\n
TITLE-WINNING EXPERIENCE SHINES THROUGH<\/p>\n
But the experience of Mertens and Zhang shone through in the tiebreak, with the Belgian underlining her class on a standout point, producing a flurry of quick-reaction shots to bring up set point before the pair wrapped up the set in 55 minutes.<\/p>\n
The fourth seeds carried that momentum into the second set to take a commanding 5-0 lead with assured net play and well-placed winners before Danilina and Krunic managed to get on the board.<\/p>\n
Although they fought back and saved two championship points as Krunic lit up the Rod Laver Arena, the fourth seeds sealed victory on Mertens’ serve when Zhang fired a backhand winner at the net.<\/p>\n
“We had a lot of things we went through this past couple of months. I had a couple of things I had to deal with at home and it wasn’t easy for us,” Krunic said.<\/p>\n
“But I’m very proud of us, that we found a way to get here, to give ourselves the best chance. I think that’s the best we can do and we learn from every loss.<\/p>\n
“Out of three Grand Slams together, two finals is a pretty damn good job.” REUTERS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MELBOURNE, Jan 31 – Fourth seeds Elise Mertens and Zhang Shuai won the Australian Open women’s doubles title…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":266643,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-266642","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266642\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}