WHAT HAPPENED: Australians Max Purcell and Jordan Thompson have a flight to catch at 6:30 p.m. on Saturday—but now they must make room for a last-minute addition to their already-packed luggage on their trip across the Atlantic: the US Open men’s doubles championship trophy.
Purcell and Thompson, the No. 7 seeds, completed a near-dominant run through the men’s doubles draw with a 6-4, 7-6(4) victory over the all-German team of Kevin Krawietz and Tim Puetz to win the 2024 US Open men’s doubles title. The duo dropped just one set combined in their six matches, and their run included a straight-sets win over the No. 1 seeds, Marcel Granollers and Horacio Zeballos, in the quarterfinals.
“I feel like we were the better team," Thompson said. "I don't really say that too often, but from the get-go, I thought we were creating chances and we just played a really good, clean match today."
The win also is redemption for the pair from two months ago, when they held match points in the Wimbledon final before letting those points—and eventually the match—slip through their grasp.
The Aussies took advantage of Puetz’s shaky serving in the first set, as he threw in four double faults in the opening frame and, eventually, was broken in the fifth game of the match to give Purcell and Thompson the opening they needed to run away in the first set.
Once again, it was the fifth game of the second set where Purcell and Thompson secured a break, this time on Krawietz’s serve, to take a 3-2 lead. At 5-3, the Australians held two match points while returning against Krawietz, but the Germans saved those and held to force Purcell to serve for the match.
Purcell was broken at love, and the set was all square at 5-5.
Two service holds ensued, forcing the set to a tiebreak. Krawietz and Puetz opened up 3-1 before the Australians rallied for 4-4. The turning point soon followed, when Krawietz double faulted to give Purcell and Thompson the minibreak at 5-4, and Purcell closed out the match in style two points later with an ace.
“I'd like to say I'm not going to screw it up twice,” Purcell said about serving for the match for the second time during the tiebreak. “I felt like something good was coming there.”
Purcell and Thompson have put themselves in some very good Aussie company, becoming the first all-Australian pair to win the men’s doubles title at the US Open since the Woodies, Todd Woodbridge and Mark Woodforde, won back-to-back titles at Flushing Meadows in 1995 and 1996.
WHAT IT MEANS: The match points Purcell and Thompson let slip away in the second set surely brought back nightmares from their other major championship match together. The team was one point away, on three separate occasions, from winning their first Grand Slam title just two months ago, as they held three championship points in the Wimbledon final. But they could not convert any of them in the end—Purcell and Thompson were defeated by the team of Harri Heliovaara and Henry Patten, who won 6-7(9), 7-6(8), 7-6(9).
“Yeah, a fair bit,” a smiling Purcell said when asked if the Wimbledon final match creeped into their minds during the second set. “Glad we didn't have to try and start from scratch in the third...Wimbledon kind of helped us and probably made us focus a little bit more once it kind of slipped again to make sure it didn't slip a third time.”
The only set Purcell and Thompson dropped during the tournament came in their second-round match against another German, Andreas Mies, and his partner, Australian John-Patrick Smith, and the No. 7 seeds had to save two match points late in the second set before winning that frame in a tiebreak and coming through in the final set.
MATCH POINT: Purcell and Thompson first played together as a team on the professional level during the 2022 Davis Cup semifinals, and their victory against Croatia’s Nikola Mektic and Mate Pavic in Málaga clinched Australia’s first appearance in a Davis Cup final since 2003. The two will now join Australian teammates Alex de Minaur, Alexei Popyrin, and Matthew Ebden in Valencia for next week’s Davis Cup round-robin stage, set to start on Tuesday, September 10.
