Julian Cash and Lloyd Glasspool became the first all-British pairing to win the men’s doubles title at Queen’s in the Open era with victory in a match tie-break over Nikola Mektic and Michael Venus.
Cash and Glasspool won 6-3 6-7 (5-7) 10-6 to earn their third ATP Tour title of the season and their fourth since beginning their partnership last year.
“It’s been a great year so far,” Cash said. “It’s really nice to start the grass season strong. Hopefully we can push on to a good run at Wimbledon.”
The Britons dominated the first set and were on course to wrap up victory with a break in the second before Croatia’s Mektic and New Zealand’s Venus fought back to take it to a tie-break, which they edged.
But in the match tie-break – played to 10 points and in lieu of a deciding third set – Cash and Glasspool got an early mini-break and then broke again before sealing victory on their first match point.
“I think we’ve been a really strong team this year and hopefully he [Julian] can continue making these tie-breaks a lot easier when he serves and the ball doesn’t come back,” said Glasspool, who was runner-up here in 2022 with Finland’s Harri Heliovaara.
The victory marks a successful couple of weeks on grass for the pair after they also reached the final in ‘s-Hertogenbosch last weekend and they will continue their warm-up for Wimbledon by competing at Eastbourne next week.
Britons to have won the doubles title here include Andy Murray, Neal Skupski and Jamie Murray but the only other all-British team to contest the Queen’s men’s doubles final in the Open era (since tennis went professional in 1968) were 1978 runners-up David and John Lloyd.
There was more British doubles success on grass in Germany, where Olivia Nicholls and her Slovak partner Tereza Mihalikova won the Berlin Open women’s title.
They came from behind to beat Italians Sara Errani and Jasmine Paolini 4-6 6-2 10-6 to win their first title as a pair.