MADRID, Spain - They saved the best for last: a dominant performance helped Hsieh Su-wei and Barbora Strycova captured the Mutua Madrid Open doubles title on Saturday.

The No.5 seeds dropped just four games to defeat No.6 seeds Gabriela Dabrowski and Xu Yi-fan in the championship match, 6-3, 6-1.

The pair dropped a tournament-low four games in the final, having been stretched to three sets against unseeded teams in both the first round and semifinals over the course of the week.

However, their two best matches of the tournament came in the quarterfinals against No.3 seeds and Australian Open champions Samantha Stosur and Zhang Shuai, 6-2, 6-4, and in Saturday's final.

"The key was today, I think, that we used to play the lobs a lot and, especially against the sun, Su-Wei did that well," Strycova said.

We tried to keep aggressive, and it doesn't matter if we win or lose the point. We keep saying to ourselves, 'Let's play aggressive. Let's just, let's just even lose the match being aggressive,' so this is a good approach for the future. We did that and it worked really well."

The No.5 seeds hardly put a foot wrong over the course of the 63-minute championship match, breaking serve five times to win their second Premier Mandatory title as a duo.

Added Hsieh: "We were supporting each other every point, every match, and even we have some cuddles. We always say, 'It is okay, next tournament.' It's really enjoyable to play together and we always try to say, 'Oh, we'll just have fun.' Ee try everything, so it is very good. It works pretty good."

In just their fourth tournament together this season, the pair claimed their second crown, and will rise into the Top 5 of the Porsche Race to Shenzehn.


"We both play very tricky tennis and especially Su-Wei, she is known by that and she's so talented. She can play every shot. She can play high, she can play drop shots. You can see that, that she was playing so much lobs today and it was working very well," said Strycova.

"Putting this together, from my side, I can say that I enjoyed it a lot and not just from the tennis view, but also like a friendship. We have really fun on the court, and she is really fun to play. There is not so much stress about how we have to do that.

"We have so many tournaments in front of us and we have so many different surfaces in front of us and this is our first tournament playing with each other on clay.

"We will see how it goes, but so far it's working well and we will just keep working hard and playing some good tennis."