{"id":17911,"date":"2022-09-11T21:55:24","date_gmt":"2022-09-11T13:55:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/?p=17911"},"modified":"2022-09-15T22:05:35","modified_gmt":"2022-09-15T14:05:35","slug":"sanders-and-peers-crowned-us-open-mixed-doubles-champions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/news\/2022\/09\/11\/sanders-and-peers-crowned-us-open-mixed-doubles-champions","title":{"rendered":"Sanders and Peers Crowned US Open Mixed Doubles Champions"},"content":{"rendered":"

With an ace down the T, John Peers and Storm Sanders captured their first Grand Slam mixed doubles title at the US Open.<\/p>\n

The Australian pairing defeated Belgian Kirsten Flipkens and France\u2019s Edouard Roger-Vasselin 4-6 6-4 [10-7] to complete a magnificent fortnight in New York.<\/p>\n

This was Sanders\u2019 and Peers\u2019 first tournament together, and after a slow start they grew in confidence before ending the final with a flourish in the match tiebreak.<\/p>\n

Sanders brought up championship point with a lunging volley winner, before Peers cemented victory with the aforementioned ace.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

It is Peers\u2019 first Grand Slam mixed doubles title and second overall, after his men\u2019s doubles triumph at Australian Open 2017.<\/p>\n

And it was Sanders\u2019 first Grand Slam final of any kind, adding significance to this breakthrough triumph at Flushing Meadows.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t believe we\u2019re Grand Slam champions, that\u2019s crazy!\u201d Sanders said to Peers during the trophy presentation, as the pair were watched on by another Australian in US Open singles and doubles champion Sam Stosur.<\/p>\n

Sanders elaborated in the post-match press conference: \u201cTo be honest, I still don\u2019t think it\u2019s really sunk in.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven before the match, I was just thinking it\u2019s another match, doesn\u2019t matter. Amazing opportunity and a great challenge to be playing on the biggest court in the world in a Grand Slam final.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously I lost my doubles semifinal yesterday in a close one. I had to kind of let that go and just really focus on today.<\/p>\n

\u201cHaving Sam there as well watching on, it was just super amazing. Kind of gave me a little bit of calmness knowing that she was there. I think she yelled out \u2018Believe in yourself\u2019 to me once, and that definitely helped.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt still doesn\u2019t really feel real to be honest. This is the first time Johnny and I have played together. We played really well all week. We had some really tough opponents. Our game styles match up really well. We also have a lot of fun out there, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\"Storm<\/a><\/p>\n

Storm Sanders (L) and John Peers beat Kirsten Flipkens and Edouard Roger-Vasselin to win the US Open mixed doubles title. (Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Flipkens and Roger-Vasselin started the stronger of the two teams before a notable crowd at Arthur Ashe Stadium, who filled most of the lower bowl, and some sections of the higher bowls, to add extra atmosphere to this Grand Slam decider.<\/p>\n

Dominant on serve and more cohesive at net, they took a one-set lead after 36 minutes, committing just two unforced errors as a pair to the Aussies\u2019 seven.<\/p>\n

But Sanders and Peers worked their way into the final, and were giving the Belgian-French duo a tougher time on serve.<\/p>\n

In the seventh game, they recovered from 40-15 down to force deuce, which in major mixed doubles matches means a sudden-death point.<\/p>\n

And while they could not convert that break-point chance, they did two games later; Peers split his opponents down the middle with a winning volley for 15-30, and then Roger-Vasselin double-faulted.<\/p>\n

It meant two more break points, and this time, two set points; on the second, Peers fired a return winner to send the final to a match tiebreak.<\/p>\n

Here, the Aussies leapt ahead 4-1 before the tiebreak tightened.<\/p>\n

And as the tension mounted, the quality rose.<\/p>\n

After a double fault, Peers rebounded with a winning overhead to put the Aussies ahead 5-4, and later played another return winner for an 8-6 lead.<\/p>\n

Roger-Vasselin then played a drop volley to keep himself and Flipkens in contention at 7-8.<\/p>\n

But it was at this juncture Sanders responded with her lunging volley winner to bring up the first, and only, championship point.<\/p>\n

Peers\u2019 ace meant he and Sanders finished with 45 winners, to Flipkens\u2019 and Roger-Vasselin\u2019s 23.<\/p>\n

\u201cStorm and I have been set with other partners when either one of us have tried to play with the other one,\u201d Peers explained about the reason his partnership with Sanders took time to finally materialise.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe sort of said a few months back, Look, if we don\u2019t do really well with a different partner, let\u2019s try to do the US.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were able to string it together here, which is great. Just timing worked out nicely. It was a lot of fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sanders and Peers confirmed they will also pair up to play mixed doubles at Australian Open 2023.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe haven\u2019t chatted past Aussie (Open) to be fair,\u201d Peers said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we\u2019ll have a chat about something like that soon.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

West Australians Storm Sanders and John Peers have completed a dream fortnight in their first tournament as a team, winning the mixed doubles title at the US Open.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6343,"featured_media":17912,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6343"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17911\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}