London (AFP)
France's Pierre-Hugues Herbert and Nicolas Mahut, last year's unfortunate finalists, won Sunday's doubles Masters final in London 6-3, 6-4 against South African Raven Klaasen and New Zealander Michael Venus.
Last year, they missed a match point in the third-half super-tie against Americans Mike Bryan and Jack Sock, but this year they dominated the tournament largely conceding no set.
Arrived as a N.7 seed, they beat the world No.1s Juan-Sebastian Cabal of Colombia and Robert Farah in the pool and the world N.2, Lukasz Kubot (POL) and Marcelo Melo (BRA) in the semifinals. .
Faced with Klaasen / Venus, they were very solid 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 after a restless season where they separated before ending up in the US Open to finish the year in apotheosis.
Herbert and Mahut are the first French doubles to win the Masters since Fabrice Santoro and Michaël Llodra in 2005 in Shanghai.
Having become the 8th pair in history to have won all four Grand Slam tournaments at the start of the season with their victory in Australia, they are now among the four who also won the Masters.
© 2019 AFP