German duo savour doubles fairytale

Mies and Krawietz beat home favourites Chardy and Martin to win men’s doubles crown.

Kevin Krawietz / Andreas Mies Roland-Garros 2019©Corinne Dubreuil / FFT
 - Ian Chadband

The unlikely German pairing of Andreas Mies and Kevin Krawietz were left reflecting on a dream year-long rise from Challenger hopefuls to Grand Slam champions on Saturday after they defeated the French duo of Jeremy Chardy and Fabrice Martin 6-2, 7-6(3) to lift the Roland-Garros men’s doubles crown.

The unseeded Mies and Krawietz threw themselves on to their backs in joyful unison to celebrate what they felt was one of the most surprising ascents in doubles after they had silenced a Court Philippe-Chatrier crowd full-throated in its excited support for their two 32-year-olds, Chardy and Martin.

The Frenchmen, though, were outplayed in the opening set and though they fought back in a serve-dominated second set, they were found wanting in the tie-break as Chardy’s delivery was twice mini-broken.

There had been some dazzling volley interplay in one particularly brilliant explosion of net tennis but, eventually, there could be no doubt about the quality of the winning team as Mies crashed home the winning cross-court volley after one hour and 25 minutes.

"Speechless"

“I’m absolutely speechless right now - and that doesn’t happen a lot,” a thrilled Mies told the crowd as both he and Krawietz apologised to them for spoiling the script. 

“I stated with Kevin last year playing on the Challenger tour and now we are standing here with a Grand Slam title,” said Mies, a 28-year-old from Cologne who then told his 27-year-old Coburg pal: “You’re a great guy and I hope we play a long time together.”

Krawietz/Mies et Chardy/Martin Roland-Garros 2019©Corinne Dubreuil / FFT

The pair had both risen up into the doubles top 50 after coming close to reaching the final in Geneva just before Roland-Garros and they beat two seeded teams on the way to the final here.

“We lost in the semis in Geneva when we had a match point and we were so disappointed that we said to each other ‘let’s play a great Roland-Garros’ - and I guess it’s worked out, right!” said Mies, while his partner just exclaimed: “What a journey, eh!?”

Chardy was sad that he had fallen at the final hurdle after he and Martin had enjoyed their own fairytale run.

“We’ve had some amazing performances together, and we’d have loved to have lifted the cup but it wasn’t to be,” said Chardy. “But we’ll keep fighting.”