The draw for the ATP finals in London also produced very interesting groups for the double competition. The two Austrians Oliver Marach and Alexander Peya can only meet in the semi-finals at the earliest.
The top seeded Oliver Marach and Mate Pavic caught an extremely difficult group at the year-end finale. First of all, they will play the duo Herbert/Mahut on Monday lunchtime. In the last duel, the French won the final of the French Open in two sets, the Australian Open Champions also lost the previous two matches.
In the Knowles/Nestor group, the Austrian and Croat will also meet last year’s finalists Kubot/Melo and the US boys Jack Sock and Mike Bryan. Marach recently described Sock in a tennisnet interview as “currently the best doubles player”. So the top seeded players shouldn’t be really happy about the draw.
In the group Llodra/Santoro the second Croatian-Austrian pair will play against the Colombians Cabal/Farah in the ATP finals on Sunday evening. For Alexander Peya and his partner Nikola Mektic, the first joint game since the Western & Southern Open in Cincinnati – after which Peya had to pause due to an elbow injury – will also be a real locator.
After that the winners of the Mutua Madrid Open will play Murray/Soares and Klaasen/Venus. The encounter between the latter two teams will also be the starting signal for the event in the British capital – from 13:00 Central European Time, London will be the venue for the last ATP title of the year.
The defending champions Henri Kontinen and John Peers, however, missed the jump to the tournament of the best eight double teams. The Finn and the Australian, who had already triumphed in London in 2016, only finished tenth in the Race to London.