Jurgen Melzer and Edouard Roger Vasselin saved a match point to beat Rajeev Ram and Joe Salisbury 6-7 (4-7) 6-3 11-9 setting up a final match against Wesley Koolhof and Nikola Mektic, who beat Marcel Granollers and Horacio Zeballos 6-3 6-4.
In the opening set Melzer and Roger Vasselin earned an early break to open up a 2-0 lead in the first set, but Ram and Salisbury broke back in the fourth game to draw level to 2-2.
Ram and Salisbury converted the first set point to win the tie-break 7-4. The US and British team went up a set and a break, but Melzer and Roger Vasselin claimed two breaks to clinch the second set 6-3 forcing the match to the decider.
Ram and Salisbury wasted a 7-1 lead in the Match Tie-Break. Melzer and Roger Vasselin reeled off seven consecutive points and saved a match point at 9-8 before claiming the win in just under two hours.
Melzer is the second Austrian player to reach a final at this edition of the ATP Finals after Dominic Thiem beat Novak Djokovic in the men’s singles semifinal.
“I try to enjoy ita s much as I can because tomorrow is my last match as a real professional player. It is kind of sad, but it is a great story to end with. Being in the final of the Nitto ATP Finals is just amazing. I would not have dreamt of this if you would have told me after the US Open that we are going to be here at the end of the year. I will try to enjoy it as much as I can, soak it all up, soak it and that’s me tomorrow”, said Melzer.
“We are just to be in the final. We lost the first match in the round robin, so after that we were like: “Okay, we have nothing else to lose. We will just fight until the last point. That is what we are going to do tomorrow, fight from the first to the last point no matter what”, said Roger Vasselin.
Mate Pavic and Bruno Soares have clinched the year-end Number 1 Doubles Team Ranking at the end of a successful 2020 season.
Pavic and Soares secured the year-end number 1 when Jurgen Melzer and Edouard Roger Vasselin beat Rajeev Ram and Joe Salisbury in the semifinals of the Nitto ATP Finals in London. The Croatian and Brazilian team completed Group Bob Bryan with a 2-1 record. Both players had already reached the top spot in the past with other doubles partner: Pavic finished the 2016 season at the top of the ranking with Oliver Marach, while Soares teamed up with Jamie Murray to reach the top of the Doubles Ranking.
Pavic and Soares won their final Group Bob Bryan, but they did not get through to the semifinals. They scored a 4-5 record before the five-month tour suspension due to the pandemic before clinching their first Grand Slam team title at the US Open. They went on to finish runner-up in two finals at Roland Garros and at the Paris Rolex Masters in Paris Bercy.
“I am very happy for Bruno and myself to end the year number 1, especially after everything that happened yesterday”, said Pavic.
