ATP Tour Finals Coverage Could Be Better in the States

Written by: Staff on 27th November 2011

Mariusz Fyrstenberg and Marcin Matkowski vs Daniel Nestor and Max Mirnyi

ATP Tour Finals Coverage Could Be Better in the States

Mariusz Fyrstenberg (L) and Marcin Matkowski (R) both of Poland hold their second place trophy after their ATP World Tour tennis doubles final match against Daniel Nestor of Canada and Max Mirnyi of Belarus held in O2 Arena in London, Britain on 27 November 2011. EPA/KERIM OKTEN |

Playing together for the first time this year, Canada’s Daniel Nestor and partner Max Mirnyi of Belarus couldn’t have had their debut season any bigger than it did on Sunday as the pair captured the ATP World Tour Finals doubles title with a 7-5, 6-3 win over Poland’s Mariusz Fyrstenberg and Marcin Matkowski.

“Six weeks ago if you would have asked me if we would have won this, I would have been surprised,” said Nestor, from Toronto. “But the way we’ve been playing in the fall, I wouldn’t say surprised.”

Added Mirnyi: “We feel great to have been able to win the tournament. We’re very excited to have done it without losing a match. We felt that we built confidence throughout the week because we escaped a few very close matches early on in the tournament. Today, towards the end of the match, I felt we both played pretty good.”

Nestor and Mirnyi only slipped up once in the match. They went down a break in the third game of the opening set on Mirnyi’s serve but got it back a game later.

“Today, I think everyone was pretty nervous on the court at times,” said Nestor. “But we’re maybe a little bit more experienced than them in the big matches and it showed at the key times.”

Nestor, who won his 75^th career doubles title, has won the ATP World Tour doubles title four times. He claimed the season-ending trophy with Mark Knowles in 2007 and Nenad Zimonjic in 2008 and 2010.

Nestor’s team swept the week with five victories and foreshadowed the win over Fyrstenberg and Matkowski with a group victory against the No. 8-ranked Europeans.

“We feel great to have been able to win the tournament and we’re very excited to have done it without losing a match,” said Mirnyi. “We built confidence throughout the week because we escaped a few very close matches early on.”

Nestor and Mirnyi also beat the pair in an Australian Open quarterfinal in January. “There’s a lot of good teams here, anything could have happened in our group,” said Nestor. “Any one of the four teams could win the tournament — fortunately it was us.”

The title was the second for Mirnyi, who won the ATP World Tour Finals in 2006 with Sweden’s Jonas Bjorkman.

Winning Doubles Money: It’s all split evenly between the two we imagine, but Nestor and Mirnyi get $65,000 for making the tournament’s final eight. And then split $287,500 for not losing a match.

Topics: Atp, Doubles