Fourth seeds Elise Mertens and Zhang Shuai won the Australian Open women’s doubles title on Saturday with \u200da 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<\/a> her \u200bsixth Grand Slam title while Zhang<\/a> won her third but the triumph almost never happened, with the Belgian-Chinese pair forced to save three match points in the second \u200cround against teenagers Iva Jovic<\/a> and Victoria Mboko<\/a>.<\/p>\n “It’s been quite a week so far,” \u200csaid 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 \u2060really grew as a team. Today, in the final, I’m happy that I served it \u200cout eventually.<\/p>\n “It’s the first week that we’ve actually played together and what a result. \u200bIt’s been amazing.”<\/p>\n Danilina<\/a> and Krunic<\/a> 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 \u200cfrom 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 \u2060shone 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 \u2060lot of things we went through this past couple of months. \u200cI 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 \u2060and we learn from every loss.<\/p>\n “Out of three Grand Slams together, two \u200bfinals is a pretty damn good job.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fourth seeds Elise Mertens and Zhang Shuai won the Australian Open women’s doubles title on Saturday with \u200da…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":401306,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-401305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=401305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401305\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/401306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}