Preview: Cabal/Farah Battle Mahut/Roger-Vasselin For Wimbledon Doubles Title

Second seeds Juan Sebastian Cabal and Robert Farah seek to etch their place in tennis history on Saturday when they face No. 11 seeds Nicolas Mahut and Edouard Roger-Vasselin in the men’s doubles final. The Colombians beat Mahut/Roger-Vasselin in their only previous FedEx ATP Head2Head meeting six years ago in Nice.

Cabal/Farah look to become the first Colombians to win a men’s doubles Grand Slam title and any title at The All England Club. The pair finished runner-up at the 2018 Australian Open (l. Marach/Pavic), while Cabal (w/Schwank) was also a finalist at 2011 Roland Garros (l. Mirnyi/Nestor).

They hadn’t reached the quarter-finals before at The Championships, but broke that barrier and then outlasted fifth seeds Jean Julien-Rojer and Horia Tecau, the 2015 champions, in an 11-9 deciding set to reach the last four. Cabal/Farah followed that up with a semi-final win over third seeds and 2018 finalists Raven Klaasen and Michael Venus.

The Colombian duo have been outstanding on all surfaces in 2019. They took the title two weeks ago at the Nature Valley International (d. Gonzalez/Zeballos), prevailed on clay at the Internazionali BNL d’Italia (d. Klaasen/Venus) and Barcelona Open Banc Sabadell (d. Murray/Soares), and finished runner-up on hard at the Sydney International (l. Murray/Soares).

Mahut/Roger-Vasselin first teamed up in 2007 and have played together sporadically over the years, winning six ATP Tour doubles titles together. They were on opposite sides of the net in the 2016 Wimbledon doubles final, with Mahut and Pierre-Hugues Herbert defeating Roger-Vasselin and Julien Benneteau.

The No. 11 seeds look to become the third all-French pair to in the Open Era to take the doubles title at The Championships. They had a challenging draw that included a third-round win over seventh seeds and three-time champions Bob Bryan and Mike Bryan, followed by a victory over top seeds Lukasz Kubot and Marcelo Melo. Mahut/Roger-Vasselin booked their place in the final over Ivan Dodig and Filip Polasek.

Mahut won the Australian Open this year (w/Herbert) to complete their career Grand Slam. Roger-Vasselin teamed up with Dodig to prevail this season in Montpellier (d. Bonzi/Hoang) and Lyon (d. Skupski/Skupski).