Jurgen Melzer and Philipp Petzschner capped a dream week by winning their first ATP World Tour title together with a hard-fought 3-6, 6-3, 10-8 victory over French-Belgian pairing Arnaud Clement and Olivier Rochus in the final of the PBZ Zagreb Indoors, an ATP World Tour 250 indoor hard-court tennis tournament.

The winning duo received 250 ATP World Tour ranking points and €21,650, while runners-up Clement and Rochus earned 150 ranking points and €11,360 in prize money.

“I have to thank my partner Philipp who carried me through the week here in Zagreb,” said Melzer. “It's his first doubles title and I want to congratulate him on that."

Austrian Melzer and Petzschner of Germany joined forces at the beginning of the season and were contesting their first ATP World Tour final together after upsetting top seeds Frantisek Cermak and Michal Mertinak in the quarter-finals and No. 3 Martin Damm and Filip Polasek in the semi-finals.

Clement and Rochus, also playing their first final together, made the stronger start to the match, racing to a 4-0 lead. Melzer and Petzschner were able to recover one of the breaks, but could not prevent their opponents from sealing a one-set lead. Clement and Rochus broke Petzschner’s serve to take a 2-1 lead in the second set before the German-Austrian duo hit back, winning five of the next six games to level the match. They then edged the deciding Match Tie-break 10-8 to clinch victory after 77 minutes.

“We came back well after 0-4 in the first set,” assessed Petzschner. “I don't know what happened at the beginning because we were playing well. We still had our chances in the first set after that. The second set was very even and we started playing very well after being a break down."

Melzer and Petzschner have made a strong start to their partnership, reaching the semi-finals at the Brisbane International (l. to Dlouhy-Paes) and reaching the third round at the Australian Open (l. to eventual champions Bryan-Bryan). They improved to an 8-3 mark.

“We complement each other very well and have been playing well during the past few weeks,” commented Petzschner. “We got a difficult draw playing the Bryans in Melbourne but still had our chances there. We also get along very well off the court and are having a lot of fun. I hope this won't remain the only title that we win together.

“Since my ranking isn't as good as Jurgen's it will be difficult to get into the Masters 1000 events. But we will try to play together as often as possible since we got off to a good start in 2010.”

The 28-year-old Melzer captured his seventh ATP World Tour doubles title from 19 finals. The left-hander won two titles last year at Pilot Pen Tennis and the Rakuten Japan Open Tennis Championships with countryman Julian Knowle. Petzschner, 25, was playing in his second ATP World Tour doubles final after finishing runner-up with Alexander Peya at the Bank Austria TennisTrophy in Vienna in 2008.