NEW YORK, NY, USA - When two of the WTA's greatest doubles players joined forces in April, everybody should have seen it coming. In just their third Grand Slam event as a team Liezel Huber and Lisa Raymond won the US Open, edging Vania King and Yaroslava Shvedova in the final, 46 76(5) 76(3).
Both teams looked very impressive getting to the final, No.3 seeds King and Shvedova losing one set in five matches and No.4 seeds Huber and Raymond losing zero sets in five matches. For King and Shvedova the final was a chance at their third Slam, having won Wimbledon and the US Open last year - for Huber and Raymond, it was a chance at their first Slam as a team.
King and Shvedova had the early momentum, Shvedova's big serve and King's craftiness at the net helping the defending champions build a 64 53 lead, but their veteran opponents never let up, battling back to push the match to a third set and, once the two teams got to the deciding tie-break, surging ahead 4-0 and never really looking back to close it out after two hours and 47 minutes.
Raymond was asked about how they pulled out the two tie-breaks. "Experience is probably one of our biggest assets as a team. We have numerous titles and numerous Grand Slams and we've been in these positions before. Even when we were down and they were serving for the match, we just stuck together and grinded it out, and now we're sitting here as US Open champions."
Huber added her thoughts. "At 64 54 down, I looked at the scoreboard and thought, 'This is going to be disappointing, losing 64 64 right here.' But it was a US Open final. It doesn't matter how ugly it got, we stuck together. The base part of it was the tie-break at the end. That was the part we felt was the way we were playing the whole US Open. It was nice to end that way."
Huber and Raymond also showed they can still be champions with a classic style of play. "Although the girls are much stronger and much better now from the back and you don't need to play doubles per se, that's the satisfactory thing about us winning, that two oldies can do it coming in," Huber said. "It's nice for us to win today knowing our game plan and being aggressive works."
For Huber it was a fifth Grand Slam doubles title, having won four with Cara Black. It also means the 35-year-old will return to the No.1 doubles ranking on Monday, adding to the 147 weeks she has already spent there.
"It's the goal for everybody to be No.1, but it's definitely not my goal. Ranking doesn't define you as a person," Huber said. "My goal has been to play with Lisa and reach success with Lisa. That goal has been achieved to some extent - but this US Open title is much bigger for me today than the ranking."
For Raymond it was a sixth Grand Slam doubles title, having won three with Rennae Stubbs and two with Samantha Stosur. The 38-year-old also took a piece of history with her - she is now the oldest player to win a Grand Slam doubles title, surpassing Billie Jean King, who achieved the feat at age 36.
