Ash Barty is bringing some metal home to Australia as she paired with CoCo Vandeweghe to win the women’s doubles at the 2018 U.S. Open in New York.
Barty and Vandeweghe beat the doubles champs from the Australian Open, Timea Babos and Kristina Mladenovic, winning a tense match that required multiple tiebreakers.
It was Barty’s first Grand Slam victory, although she is a regular fixture in the finals, reaching all four at one point or another with her old partner Casey Dellacqua, who retired one tournament too soon, it would seem.
The partnership between the Aussie Barty and the American Vandeweghe is new, having just formed earlier this year at Indian Wells in March.
Barty and Vandeweghe made it to the final by upsetting the top seeded pair of Barbora Krejckikova and Katerina Siniakova.
The result could easily have gone the other way as Barty and her partner had to stave off two championship points in the 10th game of the second set.
It was slightly anticlimactic in the end when a third tiebreaker was required, but Mladenovic double faulted to hand the victory to Barty and Vandeweghe.
John Millman turned in the best performance for the Aussie men, making it to the quarterfinal, where he ran into the resurrected Novak Djokovic.
Millman slugged it out toe-to-toe with Djokovic, but it was a Sisyphean task he faced when he stepped on the court and his effort, while admirable, resulted in a straight-set loss to Djokovic, 3 – 6, 4 – 6, 4 – 6 in the quarterfinal matchup.
Millman does leave New York with one truly impressive scalp. He beat Roger Federer in the round of 16, saving Djokovic the bother. The match required four sets and two tiebreakers, but Millman will undoubtedly come away from the U.S. Open knowing that he has the ability to slug it out with the big four and look with confidence toward January 2019 and the Australian Open.
