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Great Britain's Jamie Murray and Brazilian Bruno Soares kicked off their doubles reunion on the best possible way as on Sunday they beat Juan Sebastian Cabal and Robert Farah for the Great Ocean Road Open title. Murray and Soares, who split after the 2019 French Open, reunited for this season and beat No.
1 seeds Cabal and Farah 6-3 7-6 (7) to win it all in their first tournament back as a pair. Murray and Soares got broken in the opening game of the match but then claimed two breaks to recover and win the opener. Cabal and Farah were up by a break in the second set -- had three set points in the tie-break -- but failed to realize their chances as Murray and Soares converted their first match point to win the title.
“We had a great week, obviously, to win the title here [in] our first tournament back together. It’s really exciting,” Murray said. “Beat some top teams along the way. I think it kind of reinforces [for] us what we can do when we put good performances out on the court each day”.
Murray and Soares achieve their goal
“It definitely gets the juices flowing, that's for sure. It gets the butterflies in the stomach,” Murray said. “For us, that's what we wanted. I wouldn't say the goal at the start of the week was to win the tournament, we just wanted to get out and compete hard, play some tough matches and get a lot of time on the match court”.
Murray and Soares, who made it all the way together at the Australian Open in 2016, will now be hoping to again win it all at Melbourne Park. Elsewhere, top-seeded Croatians Nikola Mektic and Mate Pavic beat France-s Jeremy Chardy and Fabrice Martin 7-6 (2) 6-3 to win the Murray River Open doubles title.
Mektic and Pavic and blew an early first-set break but kept their focus as they dominated the tie-break to win the opener. In the second set, Mektic and Pavic earned breaks in the first game and the ninth game to wrap up a straight-set win over Chardy and Martin.