De la Puente and Gerard join list of UNIQLO Doubles Masters champions
Martin de la Puente of Spain and Joachim Gerard of Belgium capped a tremendous first season as a doubles partnership when they each won their second UNIQLO Wheelchair Doubles Masters men’s title apiece on Saturday’s penultimate day of play in Arnhem.
But while there was a new partnership to add to the Doubles Masters roll of honour in the men’s event, the quad doubles and the women’s doubles champions were somewhat familiar to the assembled home crowd at the Sportpark Molenbeke.
Sam Schroder and Niels Vink made it four Doubles Masters quad titles in a row, while Jiske Griffioen and Aniek van Koot secured their third Doubles Masters women’s title in five Doubles Masters campaigns together.
De la Puente and Gerard denied top seeds Alfie Hewett and Gordon Reid a fourth Doubles Masters title as the fourth seeds sealed a 6-4 6-2 victory for their fifth title in their maiden season playing together.
Hewett and Reid queried a line call late in the fourth game but the umpire’s decision stood to leave the three-time champions trailing by a double break at 0-4. And while the British duo saved set points at 5-2 and 5-4, De la Puente and Gerard finally got over the line to take their first set off Hewett and Reid, who had won the their three previous match-ups this season in straight sets.
It's 10 years since Gerard won his only previous Doubles Masters title, with Stephane Houdet, in 2014, while De la Puente’s only previous Doubles Masters title came in 2022 partnering Gustavo Fernandez.
However, having won their first tournament together at the Victorian Open in January, De la Puente and Gerard ensured that they ended their season with their biggest title to date as they dominated the second set. Their comprehensive victory also ensured no repeat of the deciding match tie-break they won narrowly in their semi-final against Dutch second seeds Tom Egberink and Maikel Scheffers.
“We’re very happy because they are the best team in the world and every time we’ve played them before we’ve done something wrong,” said Gerard. “So we are really happy to do it here at the last major tournament of the year. We won the first tournament of the year and the last one so it’s really cool.”
De la Puente added: “ We decided in Australia that why not play the rest of the year together and Jo is one of the top players in the year. We did a job today and throughout the year. We’ve won many titles together and sometimes it’s been tough because our styles are different but we’ve worked on that and thus week that was the key. The semi-final (against Egberink and Scheffers) was a tight one and we could have gone home but we fought until the end and again today.”
View this post on Instagram
Fifteen years after finishing as runners-up in their first Doubles Masters as partners, Griffioen and Van Koot made it three Doubles Masters titles as a partnership.
After starting their 2024 campaign with a surprise loss to fellow Dutch pairing Jinte Bos and Lizzy de Greef, the second seeds eventually added to their 2012 and 2015 victories after beating Wang Ziying and Zhu Zhenzhen 6-1 6-1, having also beaten the Chinese duo 6-2 6-2 in their round-robin group earlier in the week.
Ahead of going head-to-head in the quad singles final, Dutch top seeds Schroder and Vink once again combined superbly to lift their fourth successive Doubles Masters quad title after defeating the first-time partnership of Guy Sasson and David Wagner 6-3 6-0.
With Wagner a former 11-time Doubles Masters champion and Sasson arriving in Arnhem buoyed by his Paris Paralympic singles bronze medal and more recent rise to No. 2 in the quad singles world rankings, their fledgling doubles partnership proved no match for the two-time Paralympic quad doubles champions.