Ebden/Murray Win Winston-Salem Title In Team Debut

New partner, similar success for Matthew Ebden and Jamie Murray. Teaming for the first time this week in Winston-Salem, the pair claimed the title with a 6-4, 6-2 win against Hugo Nys and Jan Zielinski on Saturday.

The third seeds saved all five break points against them in the final as they finished the week with just one set lost. The title is Ebden’s seventh and Murray’s 27th at tour-level.

“When we spoke last week about playing here, I thought immediately it works perfectly,” Ebden said post-match. “Jamie plays on the deuce court, I’ve been playing on the ad [side]. We’ve known each other a long time. First time [playing] together but we’ve known each other, we’ve seen each other around many times.

“You never really know how its going to go, but I like to think we both know what we’re doing out there and we’re lucky we executed a lot of good points and played a lot of big points well. That was the key to the week.”

Ebden and Murray boast three Grand Slam titles between them, with Ebden victorious at Wimbledon this year with Max Purcell and Murray at the 2016 Australian Open and US Open with Bruno Soares.

Thanks to their past success, both men are very familiar with the effort it takes to win a title on the ATP Tour.

“Really happy to win a title,” Murray said. “I think the level is so high on the Tour these days, it’s not easy to win.

“For me it was like, come here, play with Matt, a great partner, enjoy the week, see what we get out of it. We managed to go all the way and got a trophy over our heads.”

While they only dropped one set on the week, the pair saved at least two break points in every match, including seven in the opening round. Both men credited strong serving under pressure for their title run.

“Even the set we did lose, I said to Jamie it wasn’t a bad set,” Ebden noted, reflecting on their quarter-final win against Americans Robert Galloway and Alex Lawson. “We had a break point we didn’t get, they had one they did get. That was it, that’s how it goes.

“To play eight or nine really good sets going into the US Open, it couldn’t be better.”