Cabal and Farah win doubles title in five-hour epic

  • Posted: Jul 13, 2019

Colombia’s Juan Sebastian Cabal and Robert Farah beat French pair Nicolas Mahut and Edouard Roger-Vasselin in a five-set thriller to win the Wimbledon men’s doubles final on Centre Court.

Second seeds Cabal, 33, and Farah, 32, won 6-7 (5-7) 7-6 (7-5) 7-6 (8-6) 6-7 (5-7) 6-3 in four hours 56 minutes.

In winning their first Grand Slam title, they became the first Colombians to triumph at Wimbledon.

The final of the women’s doubles was postponed until Sunday.

Czech Barbora Strycova, a singles semi-finalist, and Taiwan’s Su-Wei Hsieh will face Canada’s Gabriela Dabrowski and China’s Yifan Xu.

They will play on Centre Court after the men’s singles final between world number one Novak Djokovic and eight-time champion Roger Federer which starts at 14:00 BST.

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In a high-quality match, Cabal and Farah clawed back the second set with four successive points to win the tie-break from 5-3 down and level the match.

They missed a break and set-point opportunity at 6-5 in the third set before securing the tie-break and a 2-1 lead.

The first break of serve took three hours 34 minutes to arrive – but a breakthrough by the French 11th seeds at 2-1 in the fourth was cancelled out by Cabal and Farah in the very next game.

In a fourth successive tie-break, Mahut and Roger-Vasselin held their nerve to set up a deciding set, prompting the closure of the Centre Court roof for the first time in the tournament.

Leading 4-3 in the final set, Cabal and Farah broke serve for the second time before serving out to seal a thrilling victory at 21:00.

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