Jamie shows why he’ll mix it with best
JAMIE Murray underlined his reputation as the world’s best mixed doubles player here on Saturday when he won his second successive US Open title and his third Grand Slam tournament in the last 15 months.
Murray and Bethanie Mattek-Sands showed great resilience to fight back and beat Croatia’s Nikola Mektic and Poland’s Alicja Rosolska 2-6, 6-3, 11-9 after losing the first set and then trailing 4-1 in the match tie-break.
Last year Murray followed his Wimbledon triumph with Martina Hingis by winning here in New York. With Hingis retiring at the end of the year he joined forces with Victoria Azarenka at Wimbledon, where they finished as runners up, and played here with Mattek-Sands for the first time.
The 32-year-old Scot — who won the first of his four Grand Slam mixed doubles titles alongside Jelena Jankovic at Wimbledon 11 years ago — and the 33-year-old American have been an instant hit together. Both have been world No 1 in doubles and their natural instincts as doubles players have helped them to gel quickly as a team.
“Jamie is very calm and poised out there and I’m very energetic,” Mattek-Sands said afterwards. “We match. We fit each other. He covers me, I cover him.”
Mattek-Sands, who had won two previous Grand Slam mixed doubles titles, was in tears at the presentation ceremony. Twelve months ago she was on crutches after suffering a horrific knee injury at Wimbledon. This was the first title she has won since her return.
Murray said they had had “an amazing two weeks”. He added: “We’ve played a lot of great tennis. Today things were going against us but we fought really hard to try to get back into the match.”
The Scot then led the crowd’s singing of “Happy Birthday” to his mother Judy, who was in the crowd, along with Hingis and another of his former partners, Liezel Huber, with whom he was runner-up here 10 years. ◊ ASHLEIGH Barty and Coco Vandeweghe defeated Timea Babos (Hun) & Kristina Mladenovic 3-6 7-6 (7-2) 7-6 (8-6) to win the women’s doubles.