Eduardo Munoz/Reuters Ekaterina Makarova and Bruno Soares after winning the mixed doubles championship at the United States Open.
A pick-up team that registered to play with less than one minute remaining before the tournament deadline won the 2012 United States Open mixed doubles championship.
Ekaterina Makarova of Russia and Bruno Soares of Brazil defeated Kveta Peschke of the Czech Republic and Marcin Matkowski of Poland, 6-7 (8), 6-1, 12-10 (tiebreak).
Soares said that he discovered moments before the sign-in on Aug. 17 that his ranking and that of his proposed partner, Jarmila Gajdosova of Australia, would not qualify them to enter the championship.
Makarova was practicing on a distant outside court, he said. Her ranking would qualify them, he said he was told.
“So I had to run, actually my coach did that. He went running all the way over there and talked to her and called me like 30 seconds to go and said, ‘You can sign.’”
On Thursday, the pair dropped the first set in an agonizing 18-point tiebreaker. “Inside I was really nervous,” Makarova said.
But her partner praised her ability to blunt their opponents’ serving advantage. “One thing that really helps us is because she returns really well,” Soares said.
The pair upset the second-seeded team of Lisa Raymond and Mike Bryan of the United States in the first round. Peschke and Matkowski upset the top-seeded team of Liezel Huber of the United States and Max Mirnyi of Belarus in the semifinals.
http://straightsets.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/06/makarova-and-soares-last-minute-teammates-win-mixed-doubles/
"That's the way the world works... right now." --Maria Sharapova at 17
