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Italy's Simone Bolelli and Andreas Seppi warmed up for their country's World Group Davis Cup campaign against Switzerland next week by lifting the doubles title in the Dubai Tennis Championships on Saturday.
The Italians were in all sorts of trouble in the super tie-break of the final against Spain's Feliciano Lopez and Marc Lopez. At 1-5, they were in a desperate fight against the Spaniards, but somehow they managed to fight back to complete a 6-2 3-6 14-12 win at the Dubai Tennis Stadium.
The victory gave the Italian team their first doubles title. "Yes, we are very happy. A win is always good and Dubai is very good tournament, a big tournament," Bolelli said at the post-match Press conference. "And now we have the Davis Cup next week. So for our confidence it's very good to win a tournament like that.
"Thanks Andreas for playing with me this week. I really enjoyed the tournament. I think we began to play better as the tournament progressed.
"Today was very tight. Super-tiebreaker was unbelievable. We started 5-1 down. We saved a match point and then we had a match point, but with the super-tiebreaker it is always like this." Bolleli said change of tactics helped them turn their fortunes in the super tie-break.
"Well, with 5-1 down, we won a mini break, so it became 5-2. We did two serves and then we went 5-4 and the super tiebreak was even.
"It happened because we tried to play aggressive. We tried to play with the first serve. I think we also returned very well on the last points in the tiebreak. So it really ended well for us." Seppi, Bolleli's partner, started the Dubai tournament with his birthday and left the event with a title.
"Yeah, it was a very good week for me. Not in singles as I lost in the first round. Maybe I played one of the worst matches this year against Roberto Bautista Agut, but actually it's good to win the title in doubles," he said. "It's my first one. I lost six finals, so to finally win a doubles title is always something special. It's even more special when you win with a good friend like Simone.
"Also, to be honest, I didn't expect us to go so far in doubles. So what we have done is something special."
Seppi says the Davis Cup tie will be interesting as both teams are missing big players. Stanislas Wawrinka and injured Roger Federer will not be playing for Switzerland while Fabio Fognini will be unavailable for host Italy.
"Yeah, of course, Stan is not playing, Roger is not playing, and Fabio is also not playing. Three good players will be missing. It will be interesting," he said. "It's going to be a tough tie, because we play indoor clay so we don't have so much time to adapt to the surface.
"But, of course, to play home is always nice. Hopefully there will be big crowd there to support us. And, of course, we want to win this title."
rituraj@khleejtimes.com
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