This year’s BNP Paribas Open did nothing to answer the question of whether “singles players” or “doubles players” actually have an edge in doubles. That’s because all four of the participants in the men’s doubles final on Saturday are both.
By definition, Vasek Pospisil, Jack Sock, Nicolas Mahut, and Pierre-Hugues Herbert are “singles” players. But they aren’t your typical singles players who make an extremely rare doubles appearance in the desert. Guys like Rafael Nadal, Milos Raonic, Dominic Thiem, Philipp Kohlschreiber, Richard Gasquet, Andy Murray, Grigor Dimitrov, and Juan Martin Del Potro played doubles this year in Indian Wells. None of them will make more than a few doubles appearances–at most–throughout the remainder of 2016. Pospisil-Sock and Mahut-Herbert, on the other hand, are staple doubles pairings. Mahut and Herbert won the 2015 U.S. Open and secured a spot in the World Tour Finals. Pospisil and Sock have been one spot away from making it to London in each of the last two seasons.
“We have been defeated by a bunch of singles guys,” Mike Bryan said last week after surviving a first-round thriller against Nadal and Fernando Verdasco. “We see those matchups week in, week out. We win some; we lose some.”
“This tournament is very high profile doubles tournament because of all the singles stars that are entered,” Bob Bryan added. “We’re proud of the way we played here the last few years. One year we played (Roger) Federer first and Nadal (in the) second round. (There is) nowhere to hide in this draw.”
Despite the difficulty of the field every year, Pospisil and Sock have enjoyed massive success. In fact, the North American duo is looking to become the fourth team to win back-to-back Indian Wells titles (the Bryan Brothers were the last to accomplish the feat in 2013 and 2014).
But this title defense has not been easy. After cruising past Gilles Simon and Aisam Ul-Haq Qureshi in round one, Pospisil and Sock needed a super-tiebreaker to hold off Thomaz Bellucci and Guido Pella. They did not have too much trouble with Thiem and Kohlschreiber in the quarters, but got all they could handle from Feliciano Lopez and Marc Lopez on Friday afternoon. Lopez and Lopez controversially missed a match point when chair umpire Carlos Bernardes refused to let the challenge a Pospisil first serve that was shown to be out by replay. Bernardes ruled that Sock had already put way a winning volley before the Spaniards challenged. The American-Canadian pairing eventually prevailed 4-6, 6-3, 12-10.
“We made a slower start than in some of our other matches,” Sock admitted. “But we decided to switch sides on the return for the second set and for the match tiebreak, and that helped us get into some more return games. We were able to break early in the second set, which gave us some momentum we were able to ride for the rest of the match.”
Now they are in line for a date with the Herbert and Mahut.
“[Herbert-Mahut] is one of the more consistent teams on tour,” Pospisil commented. “But if we serve well and do what we’ve been doing, we have a shot. Anytime we serve well, we’re a tough team to beat.”
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Certainly cheering for Pop-Sock, but my brain says the French duo in a super TB.
PospiSock in 3!