Marcel Granollers lunged to his right and smacked Neal Skupski’s serve into an open corner of the court to break serve, sending Carlos Alcaraz leaping into the air in celebration.
Just minutes earlier, Granollers and Horacio Zeballos were a point away from losing the U.S. Open men’s doubles championship final. Moments afterward, they were champions.
Granollers and Zeballos won their second Grand Slam title of the season Saturday, edging Joe Salisbury and Skupski 3-6, 7-6 (4), 7-5.
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“Tennis sometimes is crazy,” Granollers said at their press conference, “because we were talking now coming to here that how close you are to losing the match, and then in 20 minutes you win the trophy.”
The No. 5-seeded team also won the French Open — beating Salisbury and Skupski as well — to give the longtime duo its first two major titles — and $1 million for Saturday’s — after losing in its first three finals.
They were close to losing. with the British duo holding three match points leading 5-4 in the third set. But Granollers and Zeballos won the next eight points, eventually getting their only break of the match on Granollers’ return for a 6-5 lead.
Granollers then served it out and said later he was aware Alcaraz, his fellow Spaniard who plays No. 1 Jannik Sinner on Sunday in the men’s final, was watching in a workout room.
“I saw the video, also. And then going up to the restaurant, I saw him,” Granollers said. “Yeah, he was very, very happy for us.”
Salisbury was trying for his fourth U.S. Open men’s doubles title, having won three straight with Rajeev Ram from 2021-23. He and Skupski then became regular partners this year and it was one of close but not quite. The U.S. Open was their fifth final this year and they dropped all of them.
“We’ll keep working hard and these finals will come our way one day,” Skupski said.
The tight final — Granollers and Zeballos had a 98-97 edge in total points — gave the winners a third Grand Slam victory over the No. 6-seeded pair of Salisbury and Skupski this year. They also won a matchup in the Wimbledon quarterfinals.
Granollers and Zeballos initially teamed up in 2019 and reached the U.S. Open final that year. They also got to the final at Wimbledon in 2021 and 2023 but couldn’t break through until their title this year in Paris.
They then got to the semifinals at Wimbledon but hadn’t played together since due an injury to Granollers, who called the tournament in Flushing Meadows two of his toughest weeks ever because of how he felt physically.
He and Zeballos became the first men’s team to win multiple majors in a year since Juan Sebastian Cabal and Robert Farah in 2019.
Of course, this is an amazing feeling, especially because in 2019 we came here and we lost the final,” Zeballos said. “We were very close. I think we learned a lot from that final to try to push more for this one.”
