Sensational win for Venus and Puetz to win Paris Masters doubles title

Sunday, 07 November 2021

French Open doubles champion in 2017 and now Michael Venus is the Paris Masters doubles champion with his German partner Tim Puetz. The unseeded pair have beaten French third seeds Nicolas Mahut and Pierre Hugues-Hubert 6-3, 6-7 (4) 11-9 in a quality final lasting an hour and 52 minutes.

It’s the 16th career ATP doubles title for the Kiwi and Venus will rise from his current ranking of 17 to 15 with Puetz climbing into the top 20 for the first time at 18 when the official rankings come out later today.

Venus and Puetz have quickly developed into one of the best doubles teams on the circuit and have clinched their second title of the season, but by far the biggest, having won the ATP 500 tournament in Hamburg, the European Open in June shortly after they began playing together.

“We knew we would need to play our best tennis,” said Venus. “It was an unbelievable atmosphere today and it made the final very special. It's huge, these are the biggest tournaments for us.”

Venus and Puetz started superbly and after the Kiwi held they broke Herbert first service game of the match.

Great returning helped Puetz and Venus to a 3-0 advantage in only eight minutes. Puetz served out the first set with three consecutive smashes.

The second set was extremely tight with the French pair both managing to save break points early in the set while Venus and Puetz saved deciding points at 2-3 and 3-4 respectively. The German dug deep to save four set points at 5-6 to send the set into a tie break with the French pair won when a low backhand return winner from Mahut forced Venus into an error.

It was an epic match tie break to decide the outcome with Mahut and Herbert taking an early 5-2 lead but Venus and Puetz fought back and led 8-7 when Venus hit a stinging return of serve enabling Puetz to put away an easy volley. The Kiwi brought up a first match point at 9-7 with a huge first serve but then served a double fault to let Herbert and Mahut back in it. Hugues-Herbert saved a second Championship point with a first service winner but a delightful lob from Puetz found the line to bring up a third match point and Puetz closed the match out with a nice serve allowing Venus to put away the volley for a memorable win.

While Venus and Puetz won’t be at the ATP Finals next week which have moved from London to Turin this year, they are up to 11th in the race. However they have decided to pull out of this week's Stockholm Open where they were the second seeds. There is a chance they could be alternates for the ATP Finals in Turin.