I nearly gave up in despair when I opened the only stream available for the doubles final in Los Cabos to see that the view was from a camera high up in the corner of the stand, and that didn’t change when the match started. It’s frankly pathetic that the ATP tour thinks so little of doubles that TennisTV won’t cover this discipline in just about every 250 event now, and their proposed changes to doubles from next year, including halving both the draw sizes and the prizemoney, will just about kill it.
That corner camera was the only view available for the first seven games, and just about the only winning shots I could figure out were James Watt’s smashes. He held to love first up when he and Finn Reynolds played the American pair of Ryan Seggerman and Patrik Trhac, but Seggerman gave away the first deuce of the match when he double faulted. He did win the deciding point, however, and everybody held until the stream disappeared at the end of the seventh game.
I had been going to turn the stream off, and just watch the point by point scoring, but the stream returned using a camera at the end of the court. That meant I could score properly from there on, with Trhac winning that game when Reynolds and Watt each missed their last return of serve. Trhac hit a beautiful cross-court backhand return into the tramlines in the next game, but that was the only point Watt lost on his serve.
Seggerman held comfortably before hitting a beautiful backhand return through the right-hand side of the court off Reynolds, but the left-hander held safely as well, leaving Trhac needing to do the same to force a tie-break. He was up 40-0 before Reynolds hit a winning volley through the right-hand side of the court, and beautiful forehand returns from both New Zealanders took them to deuce and a set point. An unreturnable serve took care of that, and nobody dropped a point before the change of ends in the tie-break.
That changed when Watt served for the second time, with Seggerman able to win the first point with a forehand volley into the right-hand side of the court. Watt ended the good short rally on his second point with a fabulous inside-out smash, but Seggerman only needed to hold to take the set. He duly did so, forcing Watt into a return error before Reynolds lost a good rally when forced to hit a backhand over the baseline. The set had taken 45 minutes.
Seggerman held to love to start the second set, and he won the fantastic 14 shot rally of the match with a smash when Watt served next. Even without a closeup view of those first games I could offer that label with confidence, as there was only one rally of any length in that period. Watt still held safely, as did Trhac and Reynolds in turn, with the left-hander adding a beautiful cross-court backhand volley to the highlights package in that last game.
The first hiccup in the steady progression of service holds came when Seggerman stepped up for the second time. A beautiful inside-out forehand return from Watt created the first break points in the set, with Trhac saving the first when he hit a lovely inside-out overhead volley. Watt’s next forehand return went long, taking them to deuce, and a great serve saw his forehand return of the deciding point land in the net.
From there to the end of the twelve regular games we again saw one comfortable hold after another, the only standouts being two terrific returns of serve from Reynolds. The first came at the start of Trhac’s second game, when he hit a fabulous inside-out forehand into the corner, and the second was off Seggerman two games later, this one a gorgeous cross-court backhand into the tramlines. He finished the last game by acing Seggerman, and so they were off to tie-break number two.
This time the sequence of holds went even longer than the first tie-break’s eight, with nobody faltering until Trhac double faulted to lose the first set point, the set itself having lasted 48 minutes to be slightly longer than the first. The match tie-break started with another eight held serves, but the ninth saw Seggerman hit an easy forehand winner down the tramlines off Watt.
That mini-break didn’t get cancelled out until after they had changed ends for the second timer, with Trhac double faulting to miss what should have given his team a match point. Seggerman hit a forehand into the net on Watt’s first point, but Trhac got the vital break when he hit a forehand volley straight into Reynolds to earn his team a Championship point. He wrapped it up with an inside-out forehand volley, and the title went to the American pair after an hour and 49 minutes. The final score was 7-6 (4), 6-7 (5), 10-8.