Salisbury lifts second ATP Masters 1000 title of the season while the Brits' list of accolades continues to rise
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As the hard court season unfolds, another eight titles were added to the Brits' impressive list of accolades as we approach the fourth and final Grand Slam of the season. Recap the best results from a busy week in British tennis.
Salisbury secures win in Cincinnati
After being out of action for a month due to a back issue, Joe Salisbury made a fierce comeback after earning his first-ever Western & Southern Open title alongside partner, Rajeev Ram.
The British/American pair capped a memorable week with a 7-6(4), 7-6(5) victory over last year’s Paris Masters champions, Tim Puetz and Michael Venus, to clinch the Cincinnati crown.
The top seeds posted consecutive straight-set wins against Denis Shapovalov and Karen Khachanov and Santiago Gonzalez and Edouard Roger-Vasselin to progress to the final. Their first round encounter with Thanasi Kokkinakis and this year’s Wimbledon singles finalist, Nick Kyrgios, had resulted in a match tiebreak.
“It gives us huge confidence to get the win this week,” reflected Salisbury. “First and foremost, it’s a huge tournament, our third Masters 1000 title together and Raj’s home tournament, so it’s really special to win here.
“We had a while off from playing together after Wimbledon and lost first round last week, so it’s great to get the win this week and feeling good going into the US Open."
Doubles delight in Aldershot and Memphis
The British winners kept coming in the ITF World Tennis Tour 25K tournament in Aldershot as Nottinghamshire’s Freya Christie and Scotland’s Ali Collins continued their success off the back of their win in the Foxhills W25 doubles tournament earlier this month with a 7-6(6) 6-3 win over Japanese pair Eri Shimizu and Ramu Ueda.
Meanwhile, in the men’s doubles tournament, Surrey’s Mark Whitehouse joined forces with Finnish partner Eero Vasa to defeat French top seeds Luca Sanchez and Theo Arribage 4-6 7-6(5) 10-6 in what was a high octane final. Following his triumph in Santo Domingo with compatriot Henry Patten, this marked Whitehouse’s second ITF World Tennis Tour M25 doubles win of the season.
Elsewhere, Millen Hurrion partnered with New Zealand’s Finn Reynolds to win his first-ever ITF doubles title at the M15 event in Memphis after outfoxing American duo, Alex Michelsen and Cooper Williams, 6-0, 6-1.
Quartet of champions on the Wheelchair Tennis Tour
Britain’s wheelchair tennis players completed back-to-back tournaments in Romania with a total of six titles after Ben Bartram, Dermot Bailey and Abbie Breakwell secured a hat-trick of victories at the Bucharest Open, with Greg Slade adding the quad doubles title at the Ath Open in Belgium.
On the back of winning the men’s singles at the Arges Open, top seed Bartram secured his sixth successive singles title since the end of June after dropping just four games en route to his second final in five days against fellow Brit Dahnon Ward. With Ward having beaten French second seed Geffrey Jasiak for the second time in a week in the semi-finals, he improved on his performance in the Arges Open final to take Bartram to three sets, but his efforts were to no avail as Bartram took the title 6-4, 5-7, 6-0.
Bartram and Ward’s bid to win back-to-back men’s doubles titles began well, but ultimately, they lost out to Bailey and his Spanish partner Enrique Siscar Meseguer.
Abbie Breakwell ended an eventful Romanian trip by claiming her second successive doubles title in a week partnering Israel’s Maayan Zikri. Breakwell and Zikiri finished unbeaten in a three-way round-robin event, ending with a 6-3, 6-1 win over Bulgaria’s Zoya Chadarova and Christina Pesendorfer of Austria, while the British No.3’s hopes of landing the singles title ended in a 6-3, 6-7(4), 6-0 semi-final loss to eventual champion Zikri.
Slade sealed his fourth quad doubles title of 2022 at the Ath Open after partnering Slovakia’s Tomas Masaryk to victory for the loss of just one game in both their semi-final and final. Having received a bye in the last four Slade and Masaryk completed victory with a 6-0, 6-1 win over Thomas Huguenin of France and Israel’s Yozi Saadon. Slade also recorded back-to-back straight sets wins to reach the quad singles final before losing out 7-6(1), 6-0 to top seed Masaryk.
