Bryan Brothers Move On in Doubles
by: Brian Bohl | Senior Writer - NY Sports Day | Saturday, August 30, 2008
FLUSHING MEADOWS, NY — On a humid night in Queens, one southpaw cranked the ball at speeds topping out at 130 miles per hour. The right-hander also cracked triple digits, using sheer power to outlast a tenacious opponent.
No, the Mets haven’t found fortifications for the bullpen. The righty-lefty duo play tennis, not baseball, and advanced to third round of the U.S. Open in the men’s doubles tournament.
Meet the twins, Bob and Mike Bryan, who have won five Grand Slam doubles championships together, including the U.S. Open title in 2005. It can be hard to tell the two apart, especially when the Wesley Chapel, Fla. natives are giving each other their traditional chest bump after victories.
The second-seeded Bryan brothers got the chance to play on the big stage when their match was moved from a side court to Arthur Ashe Stadium. They survived a scare on the center court before outlasting Dominik Hrbaty/David Skoch, 7-6 (2), 6-1 in a twinight match Saturday.
Mike, the older brother by two minutes, used his right-handed stroke to put 26 of his 27 service turns into play while lefty Bob utilized his hard serve to record five aces. The siblings arrived in New York as Olympic medalists, coming back from one set down to beat France’s Michael Llodra and Arnaud Clement in the bronze medal match.
The two were seeded No. 1 in Beijing and have 48 tournament titles. A semifinal loss to Switzerland’s Roger Federer and Stanislas Wawrinka knocked them down to the bronze medal match, though the brothers said they were happy to not return home empty-handed.
“We were so happy to get that bronze off that semifinals’ [match] the day before,” said Bob Bryan. “It would have been really disappointing to go home with two losses in a row but we turned it around. We were thrilled to have that medal and we’ll have that for the rest of our lives.”
About the only thing missing from the pair’s resume is a gold medal. The Bryans have won the career Grand Slam together, capturing the Australian Open in 2006 and 2007, the French Open in 2003 and Wimbledon in 2006.
The two advanced to the quarterfinals before losing at the Billy Jean King National Tennis Center last year. Six rounds are required to win a double’s major on the men’s and women’s side. In singles play, 124 participants set up seven rounds. Only 64 parings enter in the men’s and women’s doubles tournament. Just 32 pairings are allowed into the mixed doubles entry.
Hrbaty and Skoch came right at the veteran duo, holding serve and forcing an early break to take the early 2-0 lead. The Bryans finally forced a break in the seventh, a key move since both sides held serve the rest of the way to force a tiebreaker.
But the Bryans return game finally swung the momentum. Two breaks lead to four straight points and 5-1 lead. One point later, Bob Bryan used his blazing serve to secure the set. Bob connected on an ace and capped the set with a 130 mile per hour first serve that barely touched the opponent’s racket and fell way short of the net as the pro-Bryan crowd cheered.
The tiebreaker seemed to demoralize Hrbaty and Skoch, who dropped the second set’s first four games before they finally held serve to take a game in the fifth. The Bryans once again used a dominating service game to take the sixth. A 127 mph-ace finished the game and a service break ended the second set in a brisk 22 minutes. The Bryans’ third-round opponent will be the winner of the Agustin Calleri/Fernando Gonzalez- Michal Mertinak/Lovro Zovko matchup.
“We started off a little slow and brought it back,” Mike Bryan said in an on-court interview. “The crowd was great today.”
To tell the brothers apart, Mike said look for the mole behind his ear. But the best bet remains to simply watch what hand is smashing the tennis ball.
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