London (AFP)

France's Pierre-Hugues Herbert and Nicolas Mahut won Sunday's doubles Masters final in London 6-3, 6-4 against South African Raven Klaasen and New Zealander Michael Venus, the culmination of a hectic season.

Seeing the return of Michael Venus on his service to go in the net, Mahut dropped his racket, squatted and put his face in his hands while in his eyes were read the intensity of emotion that earned him .

He certainly had to rethink his lob too short that had allowed Mike Bryan to erase their only match point in the final last year (5/7, 6/1, 13/11).

But the Angevin has certainly also thought of these months tormented with his fellow Alsatian, lost and then found.

Their separation - they always talked about "break" - announced in the spring, because Herbert wanted to focus on his career in singles, had taken everyone from class, two months after their success at the Australian Open, the only tournament Grand Slam that was missing from their charts.

Their reunion at the US Open in August nearly turned into a fiasco with a severe elimination (6-3, 6-1) but earned in view of the level posted in the first round of the US Open by a team without a common reference, the Canadian Shapovalov and the Indian Bopanna.

But the current has finally passed between the friends.

- A pair that goes down in history -

A final in Vienna, followed by a perfect tournament at the Masters 1000 in Paris, without letting go of a set, we knew them fit and more dangerous than their rank of seeded N.7 did not let guess.

They confirmed in London, bringing to 18 their series of winning sets in a row by overtaking in passing the world's No. 1 Colombian Juan-Sebastian Cabal and Robert Farah in the pool and the world N.2, Lukasz Kubot (POL) and Marcelo Melo (BRA) in the semifinals.

In the final, they were very strong on their commitment, erasing 4 break points in total.

In breakant at the 3rd game of the first set and the 7th of the second, they won the trophy in 1h10 which comes to enrich an incredible track record, which is missing only 2 of the 9 Masters 1000 among the major tournaments.

First French to win the Masters since Fabrice Santoro and Michaël Llodra in 2005 in Shanghai, they definitely enter the history of the discipline, since they belong to the very closed group of four teams to have won all the Grand Slam tournaments and the Masters.

© 2019 AFP