De La Puente and Peifer claim 'amazing' Grand Slam glory

As the afternoon sun shone on the crowds in Louis Armstrong a fiercely fought doubles title battle was heating up.

After coming back from losing the first set against the defending champions, Martin de la Puente and Nicolas Peifer found themselves with three championship points in the deciding match tie-break.

They only needed one to lift the trophy with a 4-6 7-5 (10-6) victory over Gordon Reid and Alfie Hewett.

And while they embraced on court you were left thinking about what an incredible feat they had just achieved.

For Peifer, a regular at Grand Slams for many years now, it saw him lift his eighth Slam title and for de la Puente the maiden Grand Slam title of his career at only his second outing at a major.

“It feels amazing I’m not going to lie,” de la Puente said. “I know most of these guys from the tour when we were all juniors together there have been a lot of victories, a lot of losses. Sport has given me some of the most beautiful moments of my life and some of the worst as well.

“At the moment I’m really happy to get this title and I still can’t believe I’ve got it if I’m honest.”

“We knew we were trying to win this both together, not on our own”

Whilst de la Puente and Peifer’s doubles partnership is a relatively new one that hasn’t stopped them building up a win/loss record of eight wins and no losses together is one any players would be proud of.

And this title at Flushing Meadows brings their tally to three titles in the three tournaments as a partnership.

Watching them it’s easy to see how they have achieved this as even in moments when it is not going their way they pull together to make sure they meet their end goal - to get the win.

At the British Open final this year they had to make a similar comeback from one set down against Joachim Gerard and Reid and you could tell they used this experience to help them get through the tougher moments on court today.

“We’re on the same page when it comes to how we play and how we think about the sport,” Peifer said. “Sometimes in the middle of the match today the communication was a little bit tough but we knew we were trying to win this both together, not on our own so I think that is the key to the success of this week for us.”

“The Slams are now giving us the opportunity to be the tennis players we want to be”

Another key to the success of the week for de la Puente and Peifer could also be the fact that the extended men’s open division draw allowed them to take a successful partnership that was working at other levels of the tour and bring it to a Grand Slam stage.

And that is something de la Puente, who has benefitted from both Roland Garros and the US Open extending their draws to 12 and 16 respectively this season, does not take for granted.

“Everyone wants to play the Slams, lots want to be the next Rafa Nadal or del Potro in a wheelchair but the draws were too small, it was too tough to break into that top eight no matter how well you were doing at other events on tour,” he said.

“But the Slams are now giving us the opportunity to be there, to be the tennis players we want to be and dream of being and that is the key.

“And me I got this opportunity to be here and win a title because of them doing that and I hope we can see even more of this at the Slams.”