French Open 2021: Pierre-Hugues Herbert and Nicolas Mahut are the Doubles Champions in Paris, create history in doing so


French Open 2021: Pierre-Hugues Herbert and Nicolas Mahut are the Doubles Champions in Paris, create history in doing so

Pierre-Hugues Herbert and Nicolas Mahut

Sixth seed French duo of Pierre-Hugues Herbert and Nicolas Mahut created history on Saturday as they became the first French pair to win home Grand Slam twice. The duo beat the Kazakh pairing of Andrey Golubev and Alexander Bublik in the Men’s doubles final coming from a set down and winning it 4-6,7-6(1),6-4 in front of an energetic French crowd.

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The duo have already completed a career grand slam in doubles having previously won titles at the 2015 US Open, Wimbledon 2016, 2018 French Open and the 2019 Australian Open. They only lost one Grand Slam final, their first, at the 2015 Australian Open.

The emphatic duo saved three match points in the semi-finals against second seeded pairing of Colombians Sebastian Cabal and Robert Farah. The only French duo to lift the trophy were Henri Leconte and Yannick Noah in 1984 and Julien Benneteau and Edouard Roger-Vasselin in 2014.

‘The best support I’ve had in my whole life’: Mahut lauded the Paris crowd

Pierre-Hugues Herbert and Nicolas Mahut
Pierre-Hugues Herbert and Nicolas Mahut

After the match, Herbert and Mahut pair expressed their happiness and acknowledged the local support they received for the past fortnight.

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“At the end we’re here with the trophy. It’s amazing,” Mahut said. “With the family, with our wives, sons, it’s something that you’re lucky when it happen once in your life. This is the second time for us. We could not be any happier tonight.”

“From the start to the end, we had amazing support,” Herbert added. “Maybe the best support I’ve had in my whole life for a two-week tournament. The final was terrible for me as I was tight the whole match. I wanted it so badly, maybe even more than the other four, so to win was really special.” 

Herbert added: “For us as a team, we’ve been kind of struggling. We have not won a really big title for a long time now. Coming into this tournament, we didn’t come with the same confidence as we did in the past.”

“Being able to lift this trophy is just amazing because I think we won all these matches, not because we were better players, our level was not really better, but our behaviour on court. The way we stayed positive, the way we managed to play with the fears we had, that’s why now we can look at each other and say we had an amazing week.”

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Also read: French Open 2021 Finals: Novak Djokovic vs Stefanos Tsitsipas LIVE stream: When, Where, and How to Watch