Kevin Krawietz and Andreas Mies stunned even themselves once they received Roland Garros as an unseeded pairing in 2019, 4 months after successful their first ATP Tour title on the New York Open.
“After all, it was an enormous shock that we received the French Open in 2019,” Krawietz mentioned, talking to ATPTour.com forward of Indian Wells.
“We have been taking part in a Challenger two weeks earlier than. We did properly on the massive stage. After the French Open, it was additionally tough to deal with it someway, as a result of each week our opponents have been the perfect on the earth. We needed to get used to it, and we dealt with it properly… We believed in ourselves that we will beat the highest guys and be among the finest doubles groups on the earth.”
They went on to succeed in the semi-finals on the US Open and the Rolex Paris Masters later that season. Once they defended their Roland Garros title in 2020, dropping only one set because the eighth seeds, it was a distinct expertise from their maiden triumph.
“The mindset modified,” defined Mies. “From Challengers, we labored our means as much as the ATP Tour and now we’re a longtime prime doubles crew. [We] wish to keep there and get even increased over the subsequent few years.”
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The countrymen first teamed in 2017 and have performed collectively repeatedly since 2018, save for a stretch in 2021 when Mies was recovering from a knee damage. However the Cologne native felt the time aside served their partnership properly.
“I feel it really helped us,” he mentioned. “After all it was a disgrace that I needed to cease after we defended the French and had an excellent finish of the yr, after which I needed to cease for 9 months. It was powerful for me. Not straightforward, additionally mentally, as a result of we have been actually motivated to maintain going.
“After all you’ve got plenty of time to consider plenty of various things. I realised — we knew it earlier than — however I realised once more how particular our relationship is, how particular our connection is on the court docket. How properly we play collectively and the way good this complete setup is and what we’ve constructed through the years.
“You realise when you’ve got a while off… [it’s like when] you break up together with your girlfriend and then you definitely come again collectively, and also you realise what you had earlier than, which is particular. Actually glad to be again.”
Reunited in 2022, the pair received the Barcelona and Munich titles in consecutive April weeks earlier than reaching the quarter-finals on the ATP Masters 1000s in Madrid and Rome. They enter Paris at tenth within the Pepperstone ATP Doubles Workforce Rankings.
Whereas Mies and Krawietz usually are not defending champions this yr at Roland Garros — with Mies injured, Krawietz reached the 2021 quarter-finals with Horia Tecau — they enter the clay Grand Slam on a 12-match match win streak as a crew.
“The circumstances are nice for us. We actually prefer to play on clay,” mentioned Krawietz, a Munich resident.
However similar to of their two titles runs, the German is not going to enter Paris with outsized expectations. As an alternative, they’ll hope to proceed their robust kind by taking a match-by-match strategy.
“Each occasions we didn’t take into consideration the title earlier than the match or throughout the match,” Mies defined. “That’s how we did it [in 2019] and that’s how we defended it. We simply thought, ‘Who’s the subsequent opponent, what are the ways, what are we going to search for within the match?’
“I feel an important factor is to get pleasure from it and have enjoyable and the remainder will come.”
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from Tennis – ATP World Tour https://ift.tt/eB8zswA
