Playing in just their second tournament together, Timea Babos and Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova have proven an excellent team.
The Hungarian-Russian duo beat No.1 seeds Sania Mirza and Barbora Strycova to win their first WTA doubles title together as a team at Apia International Sydney.
The 6-4 6-4 victory was completed in 72 minutes and saw Babos claim her second Sydney trophy after combining to win with Lucie Safarova in 2014.
For Pavlyuchenkova, it was her first doubles title in almost four years.
“I think we actually didn’t really have a particular, I would say, tactic. We just went out there and tried to do our game, tried to dictate and play how we always played before, previous matches, and tried … not put too much pressure (on ourselves),” Pavlyuchenkova said.
“Also, it’s always good preparation and good practice for singles match, as well, which is one of the goals was to have as many matches as we can as a doubles team together.”
Babos and Pavlyuchenkova were in trouble early when they faced a break point in the fourth game.
But when Babos erased that with an overhead winner, the unseeded team then broke Mirza and Strycova in the very next game and held onto their advantage to take the first set.
Strycova in particular, was error-prone in the hot conditions at Ken Rosewall Arena and showed her frustration with some racquet flinging.
At the other end of the court, Babos and Pavlyuchenkova continued to combine solidly, forging ahead 3-0 and breaking serve with regularity.
In the final game, Pavlyuchenkova served for the title, and after two match points came and went, she and Babos clinched victory when Babos volleyed a winner off a Mirza return.
“A title is always a title. What’s more important to me is to have fun on court and really to enjoy,” Babos said.
“I think at least we found a good balance on this. Like, probably you wouldn’t even want to know what we’re talking about during matches (laughter).
“So definitely it was a great week. We beat some really good teams, the best teams the last two, three rounds.”
The result denied Mirza a third consecutive Sydney doubles title; the Indian star won in 2015 with Bethanie Mattek-Sands and last year with Martina Hingis.
