Fourth seeds Simone Bolelli and Maximo Gonzalez edged past Federico Delbonis and Jaume Munar to clinch their first doubles title as a team at the Chile Dove Men+Care Open.
The Italian-Argentine tandem won 70 per cent of first serve points (31/44) and broke serve four times to take the victory 7-6(4) 6-4 in one hour and 30 minutes.
“It was tough to play our best tennis today, after all it was a final, but the conditions were also tough and the ball was flying," Bolelli said. "But I still feel like we’ve played a very good tournament overall and made very few errors. We beat some good teams, and that will give us a lot of confidence in the rest of the season.
“We’re going to try to play as much as possible together. I still have to improve my doubles ranking, but with this victory it will help.”
The victory marks 35-year-old Bolelli’s sixth doubles title, and his first since 2016 in Dubai (w/Seppi). The Italian has lifted a Grand Slam trophy at the 2015 Australian Open with Fabio Fognini. For 37-year-old Gonzalez, the victory seals his fifth triumph in the ‘Golden Swing’, and ninth trophy overall with eight different partners.
“This is my ninth ATP trophy, and my first with Simone so I’m very happy that we were able to achieve this,” Gonzalez said. “We started playing together last year, post-pandemic around the time of the US Open. We have been playing well in the last few weeks, but we lost match points last week in Buenos Aires.
“We had that on our mind when we came to Santiago, but every day we’ve been playing better and better. We had to play more aggressive today, especially playing against two experienced clay-court players who are used to slugging out the points.”
Bolelli and Gonzalez led 4-0 with a double break in the first set, but found themselves in trouble as Delbonis and Munar began to fight their way back. The Argentine-Spanish team reeled off the next four games to level the score and led in the ensuing tie-break. But Bolelli Gonzalez reeled them back just in time to edge through the set.
The fourth seeds got on the scoreboard early in the second set and focussed on keeping the points short to close out their first ATP Tour title of the year. Bolelli and Gonzalez reached the quarter-finals last week at the Argentina Open and the third round at the Australian Open earlier in the season.
from Tennis - ATP World Tour https://ift.tt/3cxVsvV
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