Update 1:55 pm. Australian–Czech duo Paul Hanley and Lukas Dlouhy have won the Brisbane International men’s doubles title after Swede Robert Lindstedt retired injured.
Hanley and Dlouhy had just won the first set 6-4 when Lindstedt called the trainer on court during the break between sets.
After conferring with his playing partner, Horia Tecau, Lindstedt approached Hanley and Dlouhy to let them know that he could not continue.
Lindstedt injured his left calf late in Saturday’s semifinal win over Germany’s Philipp Petzschner and Austrian Alexander Peya.
This is Hanley and Dlouhy’s first Brisbane International title and first doubles title as a team.
“Yeah obviously you know it’s a little disappointing to win the final like we did, but we played really well I think all our matches,” Hanley said.
“We had a tough first-round match, then played really well again in the semifinal. And I think sometimes, you don’t always have to play your best tennis to win a tournament, you know and that’s what happened obviously today, but we played some great tennis before obviously today’s final. And you know there’s a lot of good things we can look back on.”
Dlouhy said although he knew Lindstedt injured himself in yesterday’s semifinal, he was not thinking about it, but instead focusing on his own game with Hanley.
“But I feel really sorry for Robert – but I mean we won and we have to be happy about it,” he said.
Hanley said they could see Lindstedt was struggling, but they couldn’t hold back their own game as a result.
“We could see he was struggling particularly out wide and we tried to make him move as much as possible or bring him in, you know a few drop shots, try and make him run forward,” Hanley said.
“Especially on the return we noticed … But it’s tough too sometimes, I mean we struggled I think early, saw that obviously he was struggling out there and that can be sometimes mentally a little bit frustrating. But no we did well and we concentrated hard and once we got our momentum going we really kept it up and got that first set.”
The duo has been playing together for just one week.
“We’ve locked in the next three weeks – so the Australian summer we’re playing together – so we’ll talk about that [continuing the partnership] obviously when the time comes,” Hanley said.
“What a great start to the year, I don’t think we dropped a set all week so it’s a really good start.”