Ball and Guccione win their first ATP doubles title

Carsten Ball and Chris Guccione have won their first ATP doubles title with a victory in the final of the Hall of Fame Tennis Championships in Newport.

The Australian duo recorded a 6-3 6-4 win over No.4 seeds Santiago Gonzalez of Mexico and Travis Rettenmaier of Los Angeles in the final.

The left-handed Australian pair capitalised on their two break point chances and saved the two they faced on serve to close out the match in 56 minutes.

“We’ve played some big matches before; that definitely helped us today,” said Ball.

“It’s still the final, so it’s still a lot on the line, but we were just trying to take care of business.

“It’s our first final, our first win together. We were feeling pretty confident coming from Wimbledon, making third round, and we played well, better as the week went on, so we’re pretty happy.”

Guccione added “it feels great.”

“Carsten and I have had some really good results before, but this was our best result in a Tour event and it feels great to get the win. Hopefully, we’ll keep on going up.”

After knocking off top seeds Mardy Fish and Sam Querrey in the first round, Ball and Guccione went on to drop just one set in the remainder of the week.

The Australian pair were making their maiden appearance in an ATP doubles final while Gonzalez and Rettenmaier were attempting to win their second ATP World Tour title after claiming the Belgrade title in May.

Ball and Guccione are the first Australian duo to win the Newport title since Jordan Kerr and David Macpherson in 2003.

Both Australians will now play in the Comerica Bank Challenger in Aptos, California this week with Ball to meet fellow countryman Jo Sirianni and Guccione to play Izak Van der Merwe from South Africa.

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