ATP Tour

Miedler/Oberleitner march to Shanghai doubles crown

Lucas Miedler and Neil Oberleitner capped a dominant run at the Rolex Shanghai Masters by clinching the trophy in style on Sunday afternoon inside Qizhong Forest Sports City Arena.

The Austrian pair downed Francisco Cabral and JJ Tracy 6-3, 6-4 to seal the trophy at the ATP Masters 1000 event without having dropped a set across its five matches. On Sunday, Miedler and Oberleitner earned the only break of each set en route to a 66-minute championship-match victory.

The Rolex Shanghai Masters was just Miedler and Oberleitner’s second tournament since coming together as a new partnership. Having reached the quarter-finals in Tokyo, the pair has now become the first all-Austrian team to win a title in Masters 1000 series history (since 1990).

“I think if you never won a 1000 before, you cannot expect it to happen in the second week of our new partnership,” the 30-year-old Miedler said. “The idea was to play well together. I mean, that it works after Tokyo and second tournament in Shanghai here is unbelievable. We knew that our game styles, they're matching, that it can work. That it works like this is just simply unbelievable.”

Miedler and Oberleitner were particularly secure on serve in their first Lexus ATP Head2Head meeting with Cabral and Tracy. The Austrians did not face a break point and won 96 per cent of points behind first serves, according to Infosys ATP Stats.

The Shanghai title is the biggest of Miedler’s 14 ATP Tour doubles crowns, while it was just a second tour-level trophy for Oberleitner after he won Winston-Salem in August alongside Petr Nouza.

“It's surreal,” the 27-year-old Oberleitner reflected. “The feeling is crazy. Like Lucas said, we knew we were going to play good together, and of course you never know, but you have a feeling. That it works in the second week obviously is great for us, and I'm excited what comes next. Obviously we try to keep it going and work on our game, improve, improve.

“It means a lot to me that I can show it on the big stage. I feel like I had it in me, but to show it and to have this title is unbelievable.”