Two players who are quite familiar with each other and two who are not were victorious last week at the Medibank International Sydney and Moorilla Hobart International, respectively.

Going into this season, Cara Black and Liezel Huber had not won a Sony Ericsson WTA Tour doubles title since August, a drought by their lofty standards. That mini slump is long forgotten, though, now that the world No.1 doubles players have kicked off 2010 by going 4-0 en route to the title in Auckland two weeks ago and 4-0 en route to the title in Sydney last week. However, they were pushed a bit in securing their 29th Tour title together, as they needed a match tie-break to get past unseeded Tathiana Garbin and Nadia Petrova in Friday's final, 61 36 103.

"We're really excited and pumped up about winning our first two tournaments of the year," said Black, who now has 53 Tour doubles titles as an individual, while Huber has 41. "Now we're just looking forward to going to the Australian Open because we can't ask for any better preparation. We'll have the day off tomorrow and enjoy the win. I think we'll do a bit of shopping and relax."

Meanwhile, unseeded Chuang Chia-Jung and Kveta Peschke, in their first tournament together, captured Hobart with a match tie-break victory in Saturday's final against Chan Yung-Jan and Monica Niculescu. Chuang and Peschke each now have 14 career Tour doubles titles, with Peschke recording her first since Doha in 2008, as she was injured for much of 2009. Chan and Niculescu had taken out No.1 seeds Hsieh Su-Wei and Peng Shuai in a match tie-break in the semifinals, 76(5) 46 108.