French Open: No Da Capo – Oliver Marach loses final with Mate Pavic

For Oliver Marach and Mate Pavic it was not enough for the second Grand Slam title of the year at the French Open: The Styrian and his Croatian partner Mate Pavic defeated the two Frenchmen Nicolas Mahut and Pierre-Hugues Herbert in two sets with 2:6 and 6:7 (4).

Not that Oliver Marach seriously dreamt of winning the Grand Slam, i.e. the success with all four majors within a calendar year. With the 2:6, 6:7 (4) defeat against Nicolas Mahut and Pierre-Hugues Herbert, the issue has now finally been resolved in the doubles match for 2018.

The other champions of Melbourne had either never competed in Paris (Roger Federer) or had already lost the previous days.

The match against the two local heroes started very unfavourably, Pavic had to give up his serve immediately. In the first run, he and Marach followed this gap and were beaten by 40 minutes to 6:2, but this shows that the games were very close.

In the second act Marach/Pavic had more access, Alexander Peya with Nicolas Mektic against Mahut/Herbert was missing. However, Marach had to give up his service in the seventh game, reason enough for the French fans to send the wave through the stands of Court Philippe Chatrier. But immediately afterwards Mahut had to give up his serve for the first time in the entire match – 4:4.

This was followed by a small drama from an Austrian-Croatian point of view: Marach/Pavic were unable to use four set points in their twelfth game, one of which got stuck on the “wrong” side of the net. In the tiebreak, the French quickly took a 5:2 lead, after 1:40 hours Herbert made the third Grand Slam victory with Mahut on his own serve.

Nicolas Mahut and Pierre-Hugues Herbert are the third purely French pairing to succeed in Roland Garros. Yannick Noah and Henri Leconte succeeded in this in 1984, Julien Benneteau and Edouard Roger-Vasselin in 2014. In addition, Herbert/Mahut have established themselves as fear opponents of Marach/Pavic: In the third match, the French won for the third time.

Austria must continue to wait for the first success on Parisian sand. Jürgen Melzer has two major victories (Wimbledon 2010 and the US Open 2011), Julian Knowle was also successful at the US Open in 2007.