Bryans Capture Eighth Title Of The Year

© Getty ImagesThe Bryans celebrate winning their 64th tour-level team title.

Reigning ATP World Tour Doubles Champions Bob Bryan and Mike Bryan continued their devastating run of form as they won their eighth tour-level title of the season with a 6-3, 6-4 victory over Mahesh Bhupathi and Max Mirnyi in the final of the Western & Southern Financial Group Masters in Cincinnati on Sunday.

The Americans, who are 8-0 in finals this season, received 1000 ATP World Tour ranking points by virtue of winning the ATP World Tour Masters 1000 title. They are currently second in the 2010 ATP Doubles Team Rankings, with the top eight teams at the end of the season to qualify for the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals in London.

Going into the US Open, which begins on Monday 30 August, the Bryans are on an eight-match winning streak, having also won the ATP World Tour Masters 1000 title in Toronto (d. Benneteau-Llodra) last week. Three weeks ago in Los Angeles, they set the Open Era record for the most team titles (62), surpassing recent Hall-of-Fame inductees Todd Woodbridge and Mark Woodforde (61). They opened their 2010 title haul at the Australian Open and have also been victorious in Delray Beach, Houston, Rome and Madrid.

“You never want to be satisfied; you always want to keep focused on how you can get better,” said Bob. “Right now we’re focusing on a big summer and it felt great (breaking the titles record in Los Angeles), people have been talking about it for a couple of years.”

Added Mike: “I think a weight’s been lifted since we broke the record. It was playing on our minds, we wanted to do it at Wimbledon, but we’re really happy that the pressure’s released and it’s shown in our play in the past few weeks. We walked into this match and we kind of had nothing to lose. It feels great that we've secured a small part tennis history. For us, the rest is icing on the cake.”

The second seeds found themselves down 0-2 in the opening stages of Sunday’s final against fourth-seeded Bhupathi and Mirnyi, but fought back strongly to win the next five games before securing a one-set lead. They then broke the second-set deadlock in the seventh game with a break of Bhupathi’s serve and went on to claim victory in just under an hour.

It was the fifth straight year that the 32-year-old Bryan twins were contesting the Cincinnati final and the third time they have lifted the trophy, having also triumphed in 2008 (d. Erlich-Ram) and 2003 (d. Arthurs-Hanley). They finished runners-up in 2006-07 and 2009.

Indian Bhupathi and Belarusian Mirnyi suffered their third defeat in an ATP World Tour Masters 1000 final this season, having also lost out in Miami (l. to Dlouhy-Paes) and Monte-Carlo (l. to Nestor-Zimonjic). They were bidding to win their first title together since Rome in 2004.