Steirer Oliver Marach and his Croatian partner Mate Pavic won the doubles competition at the Australian Open and won their first Grand Slam title. The seventh seeded duo beat Colombian Juan Sebastian Cabal/Robert Farah (No. 11)6-4,6-4,6-4 in the final.
From Ulrike Weinrich from Melbourne
In the witch’s cauldron Rod Laver Arena, Marach and Pavic kept a cool head. And this despite the fact that many Colombian fans cheered loudly on their countrymen time and again. After 1:33 hours, experienced Marach (37) and left-handed Pavic (24) turned their first match ball – at 0:43 local time. Both could hardly believe their luck.
Marach, who lives in Panama, is the third Austrian after Jürgen Melzer (Wimbledon 2010, US Open 2011) and Julian Knowle (US Open 2007), who was able to land a major coup in the men’s doubles. The winners from Melbourne received a total prize money of almost 453,000 euros. Marach/Pavic had lost their first Grand Slam final in Wimbledon in July 2017 – 11:13 in the fifth set against the exceptional Lukasz Kubot/Marcelo Melo (Poland/Brazil).
Above all, Marach was extremely nervous at the Centre Court. The right-hander with the neon-yellow shoes and the baseball cap upside down fought off four break points at a score of 1:2 in the first set. A short time later, the European team took away the 5-4 lead from their South American opponents. Pavic then managed to win the set after 46 minutes with a volley-cross.
In the second round, the game remained tight. Again, Marach had to fight off two break points at a score of 0:1, but the self-confidence was noticeable to the team in seventh place after the successes of the last weeks. The preliminary decision was again made in the ninth game, which was won by Marach/Pavic. Shortly afterwards Marach sealed the triumph with a service winner.
This season, Marach/Pavic are still unbeaten after having already won the tournaments in Doha and Auckland before the Aussie Open:”We have the self-confidence of the first few weeks of the year, which makes a lot of difference in the important points,”the Graz resident emphasized time and again. The other side of the coin? The forces finally faded noticeably.”I play on reserve. I don’t have any injuries now, but the body is just over-acidified after all the games,”Oli explained. After a cheerleader in the semi-final against Jan-Lennard Struff/Ben Mclachlan (Warstein/Japan) Marach had even briefly become dizzy.
Pavic is 13 years younger than Marach, but the left-hander from Split had to play in the mixed on Thursday after the double semi-finals. Just like on Friday, when he reached the final with Canadian Gabriela Dabrowski, which will be played out on Sunday afternoon local time.
Despite the strains of the last few weeks, Marach is determined to win the Davis Cup duel for the Alpine republic against Belarus (2nd/3rd place). February) in St. Margarita This is very important to me. But I won’t start training there until Wednesday. I’ll fly back on Sunday”, Marach announced. This is coordinated with Captain Stefan Koubek. First, the Melbourne finalist wants to be checked out by the doctor or physio after returning home.