Murray/Soares And Spaniards Vie For US Open Crown
Murray/Soares And Spaniards Vie For US Open Crown
Fourth seeds aim for second Grand Slam doubles title this season
A new team will be crowned US Open champion on Saturday when fourth seeds Jamie Murray and Bruno Soares square off against unseeded Pablo Carreno Busta and Guillermo Garcia-Lopez.
For the British-Brazilian pairing, it will be an attempt at a second Grand Slam doubles title of the season after winning the Australian Open. Murray/Soares saw off defending champions Nicolas Mahut and Pierre-Hugues Herbert in the semi-finals and should they triumph in the final, they would become the first team to win multiple Grand Slam titles in a season since Bob Bryan and Mike Bryan won three in 2013.
The Brit/Brazilian duo, who started playing together this season, won the first Grand Slam tournament they played, the 2016 Australian Open. But they lost in the third round at Roland Garros and fell in the quarter-finals at Wimbledon.
Both have contested finals in New York before, however. Murray finished runner-up at Flushing Meadows last year (w/Peers) while Soares fell in the 2013 final (w/Peya). The Brazilian had previously tasted US Open success with mixed doubles titles in 2012 and 2014.
Their opponents, Spaniards Carreno Busta and Garcia-Lopez, have never progressed past the third round in a Grand Slam tournament. Coming into the US Open, they were 0-2 as a team this season (10-10 lifetime), although both had carried form over from the US hard-court swing.
Carreno Busta won his first ATP World Tour singles title and Garcia-Lopez won the doubles trophy at Winston-Salem. It would cap a strong turnaround for Garcia-Lopez, who started the season 0-11 in doubles before reaching the semi-finals in Atlanta last month.
Carreno Busta/Garcia Lopez become the first unseeded duo to reach the US Open final since 2000 when Lleyton Hewitt and Max Mirnyi captured the title (d. E. Ferreira/R. Leach).