This Sunday could be historic for Argentine tennis. The opportunity of the Mar del Plata Horacio Zeballosin pairs with the Spanish Marcel Granollers, generated expectation. But in the defining match of the ATP Finals those who celebrated were the Americans Rajeev Ram and the british Joe Salisbury, who became champions for the second consecutive time and deprived the Argentine duo of reaching number 1 in the specialty ranking. The match was the prologue to the singles final between the Serbian Novak Djokovic and the Italian Jannik Sinner.
The story did not start well for the Argentine-Spanish duosince a break in the fourth game gave the advantage to Ram and Salisbury, who had a very high level, with an offensive game, to stay with the first set by 6-3.
There was not a moment in the almost 75 minutes of play in which the winning duo lowered the intensity, which is why both Zeballos and Granollers will have little to blame themselves for that 6-4 in the second set that sealed the result.
In fact, Zeballos left the audience in the stands speechless with a impossible shot: From the back of the court, on the line, the man from Mar del Plata passed his racket between his legs and caused Ram to make an error in the net. Awesome.
Zeballos-Granollers were the fifth seeded couple in the Masters, a tournament that brings together the eight best of the season in each specialty, and they had reached the decisive game undefeated after winning their three group matches and leaving Rohan Bopanna (India) and Matthew Ebden (Australia) in the semi-finals.
They have been playing together for just over four years – since August 2019 – so a victory this Sunday in Turin, with the addition of finishing the year as number 1 in the world, would have been a perfect ending to a year in which they had won the title at the Shanghai Masters 1000 and were finalists on the Wimbledon grass.
“We had fun on and off the court. It’s nice to be finishing the year with him, in this great tournament, it’s a reward for any player to reach the final. I’m not happy obviously, but knowing that we had a great end to the season”explained Zeballos, 37, when asked about the formula for good performance with Granollers.
2023-11-19 16:31:34
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