A U.S. summer of success continued for Nathaniel Lammons and Jackson Withrow on Saturday at the Winston-Salem Open.
The American duo downed second seeds Lloyd Glasspool and Neal Skupski 6-3, 6-4 in the final at the hard-court ATP 250 for their third tour-level title as a team, all of which have come in the past six weeks on American soil.
“I think our U.S. summer has been pretty great so far, taking our third title,” said Withrow. “I think even coming here, where we hadn’t had the best results before, kind of getting on top of that and just trying to trust our stuff and playing well in Winston is a confidence builder for us [heading into the US Open].”
Having triumphed back-to-back in Newport and Atlanta in July, Lammons and Withrow did not drop a set en route to the trophy in Winston-Salem, where they also defeated top seeds Rajeev Ram/Joe Salisbury in the first round and third seeds Hugo Nys/Jan Zielinski in the semi-finals.
“Tennis is a sport where we spend at least half of our year in other countries, so it’s always cool to be back home,” said Lammons. “The crowd really gets behind us, it’s fun to play with that atmosphere and we feel like we’re playing for more than just ourselves. It’s a lot more fun, and I think that’s a big reason why we’ve been successful.”
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Saturday’s victory against British duo Glasspool and Skupski was based on a rock-solid serving performance. Lammons and Withrow did not face a break point in their 63-minute triumph as they won 89 per cent (31/35) of points behind their first delivery.
In contrast, it was a lapse on serve that cost Glasspool and Skupski dearly at the business end of the first Lexus ATP Head2Head meeting between the teams. Two double faults from Glasspool helped Lammons and Withrow break for 5-4, and the Americans made no mistake in serving out to improve to 3-3 in tour-level championship matches in 2023.
Another successful week in their homeland sees Lammons and Withrow continue their mid-year charge towards the qualification spots for the season-ending Nitto ATP Finals. The duo, which is now 37-20 for the year, remains 12th in the Pepperstone ATP Live Doubles Teams Rankings but is just 265 points shy of Sander Gille and Joran Vliegen in seventh.
“The start of this year, I think we saw what [Lloyd] Glasspool and Harri Heliovaara had done last year," said Withrow. "We kind of used them as a reference point for us. We thought, ‘Let’s just have a really consistent year and hopefully we make the year-end finals’. That was our goal going into it. It was just about stacking, stacking, stacking results, and I feel like we’ve been doing that.”
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