Newlywed Eric Butorac had the best wedding gift when he and Jean-Julien Rojer won the doubles event of the Malaysian Open ATP 250 tennis championship at Putra Stadium, Bukit Jalil, yesterday.
The 30-year-old American Butorac was competing in his first tournament since getting married last month and yesterday the second seeded pair were simply scintillating against third seeds Frantisek Cermak-Filip Polasek of Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Butorac-Rojer, who had a great tournament so far, broke Cermak-Polasek’s serve twice in the first set and easily took it at 6-1.
In the second set, Cermak-Polasek provided some stiff resistance but Butorac-Rojer’s energetic net play was simply too much for the eastern Europeans to handle as they broke serve three times to take the match 6-1,6-3.It was a sad end for one half of the defending champions Cermak, who on Saturday had played brilliantly with Polasek , to knock out US Open doubles champion Jurgen Melzer-Phillip Petzschner in the semi-finals. But the day belonged to Butorac-Rojer who had a great season so far, winning two titles already in Nice and Estoril earlier in May.
“We honestly did not expect it to be that easy because Cermak-Polasek are great players and they had a fantastic tournament thus far,” said Butorac. “But it was just one of those days when every shot you hit feels great and you can actually plan the next shot in advance.
Unfortunately, there’s not going to be much of a celebration because we’ll catching the next flight out to Tokyo for the Japan Open which we won last year,” said Butorac.
Meanwhile, Rojer who hails from Netherlands Antilles, dedicated the victory to Butorac and hopes to maintain their form and qualify for the ATP World Tour Finals in London next month.
The duo were previously ranked ninth in the world but winning the Malaysian Open will see them move back up into the top eight rankings in the world.
“It feels great to move back into the top eight but we actually try not to think about it too much and prefer to focus on playing good tennis. It has been a great year for us and we always enjoyed success towards the end of the season, so hopefully we’ll qualify for London for the first time,” said Rojer. - By KNG ZHENG GUAN (The Star)
