Marach/Qureshi defeat Kohlmann/Waske to clinch title win – PTT Thailand Open 2011
Top seeds, Oliver Marach of Austria and Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi of Pakistan marked their dream partnership debut after clinching the title at the PTT Thailand Open, an ATP World Tour 250 series event held on the indoor hard courts
of the Impact Arena in Bangkok, Thailand. They registered a 7-6(4), 7-6(5) victory over the Germans, Michael Kohlmann and Alexander Waske, on Sunday.
The high flying duo of Marach and Qureshi required almost two hours overwhelming the Germans resilience in both sets’ tie-breaker on their first meeting. After earning this success, Marach clinched his tenth doubles title while
the Pakistani shelved his third.
The Austrian Pakistani duo confidently entered the Thai’s hard courts and held their opening serve to square the scores at 1-1. They bleed first in the sixth game to trail 2-4 but quickly roared back in the following game to lower
the lag. Marach and Qureshi then warded off four out of five breakpoints faced and converted one out of three breakpoint opportunities to his advantage. As a result, the set went to a tie-breaker where the top ranked tandem proved their class and clinched
the opener with a 7-6(4) win.
The blissful pair of Marach and Qureshi kept momentum flowing into the final set and after fending off four breakpoints came across, they held entire serves. However, the duo failed to capitalise on the four breakpoint chances
they founded and dragged the set to another tie-breaker. They went into overdrive mode to pull out the victory with a 7-6(5) score line.
Summing up the highest ranked team’s performance, Marach and Qureshi hammered seven ferocious aces, clobbered an acceptable first serve share of 69 percent as compared to the Germans’ 74 percent and earned a spectacular 81 percent
win on it.
"Of course I’m very, very happy to win another title, especially with Aisam because he’s a very nice guy," said Marach, who won his third title of the season. "I’m happy that I played very well today; I hope we can play together
again and win another one."
"Obviously it’s very, very exciting; it’s my third career title," said Qureshi. "I was playing for the first time with Oliver and I’m really happy to be in Thailand and win the title. I’m looking forward to playing with Rohan again
next week."
The Pakistani number one is teaming up with his Indian partner Rohan Bopanna as top seeds in Tokyo this coming week. He won his second title with Bopanna earlier this season at Halle in June.
Tags: