By Shrivathsa Sridhar
PARIS (Reuters) -Fifth seeds Marcel Granollers and Horacio Zeballos bagged their maiden Grand Slam trophy as a pair by battling past British duo Joe Salisbury and Neal Skupski 6-0 6-7(5) 7-5 in the French Open men’s doubles final on Saturday.
Playing in a fourth Grand Slam final together, Granollers and Zeballos looked on track to quickly break their duck when they blanked their eighth-seeded opponents in the opening set before being dragged into a dogfight in the next.
Salisbury and Skupski, who won the only previous tour-level encounter between the two teams in the Rome quarter-finals last month, edged the second set tiebreak and were close to building a 4-3 lead in the decider before a moment of magic.
Zeballos hit the shot of the match to level at deuce in the next game, chasing down a dipping ball and squeezing it around the post at ground level to draw loud cheers from a small crowd on Court Philippe Chatrier.
Salisbury and Skupski, who became the first British men’s doubles finalists at Roland Garros since 1936, were in no mood to fade away on the historic occasion as they fought on before being caught off guard in the 12th game.
Granollers and Zeballos broke to love to secure victory and fell to the ground in celebration.
(Reporting by Shrivathsa Sridhar in Paris, editing by Pritha Sarkar)
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