LONDON: Austria`s Juergen Melzer and Germany`s Philipp Petzschner made off with the match balls after winning the Wimbledon men`s doubles title here on Saturday.
The unseeded pair beat Sweden`s Robert Lindstedt and Romania`s Horia Tecau, the 16th seeds, 6-1, 7-5, 7-5 on Centre Court.
"I said if we really win the tournament, I take the ball that we win the match point with. I take it home with a towel, the shirt, and I will put it on my wall," Petzschner said.
"Then he said, `Yeah, so what about me?` So I said, OK, we take two balls.
"I gave one to him, one to me. They`ll go some place in my house.
"We had a really good start in the match. We played incredible tennis the first set. Also in the second set, we were the much better team. We just played one of our best matches out there. We deserved to win."
Melzer and Petzschner take home 240,000 pounds (365,000 dollars, 290,000 euros) between them, while the runners-up receive 120,000 pounds to share.
They first teamed up at Brisbane this year and have already won the Zagreb title. Wimbledon was their seventh tournament as a pair.
"We`re just two good singles players who proved in the past that we could play doubles. It was just a matter of how good we get together," Melzer said.
"We won a tournament at the beginning of the year that proves that we already played some good tennis there.
"Here, we just got everything together and we played great from the first round. Had one tough one in the semis. But still I think we really played good, good doubles over the two weeks."
It was the first time since 2005 that an unseeded pair had reached the Wimbledon final.
Defeats for top-ranked pairs Daniel Nestor and Nenad Zimonjic, and Bob and Mike Bryan earlier in the tournament had opened the door.
Petzschner is only the second German to win a men`s doubles Grand Slam title in the Open Era. The first was Michael Stich at Wimbledon in 1992.
Melzer likewise is the second Austrian to do so, after his former doubles partner Julian Knowle, who won the 2007 US Open title.
In the Wimbledon singles, Melzer was knocked out by the top seed Roger Federer, while Petzschner took finalist and second seed Rafael Nadal to five sets.
BDST: 1220hrs, July 4, 2010
