'TOTALLY OUTRAGEOUS'

Feel good stories do in fact happen in sport. The last post on this site titled 'David vs Goliath' was in relation to the remarkable run of the unseeded Wild Card pairing of Ben McLachlan and Yasutaka Uchiyama of Japan in their home town Championship this week.
Not satisfied with a semi final showing these two went on to make it through to the final where they took on the team who finished the year of 2016 ranked number 1 in the World, Jamie Murray and Bruno Soares.
Now for a team who are basically financially broke they would have been forgiven if they had simply gone through the motions in the final to take home a share of around $50,000 which would be like winning Lotto for these two.
They went one better.
McLachlan and Uchiyama can lay claim to home town hero status with a straight sets win over a team who probably had no idea as to who they were even playing. The 6-4, 7-6 win with a 7-1 Tie break score will go down as one of the best stories in tennis for the year as it defies any type of logic due in large to who the winners are used to playing on the Challenger Circuit.
So the question remains, do seasoned teams struggle against players who they know very little about ? Rojer and Tecau will probably say yes as twice this year they lost tight matches to a 'nobody' team as they did the same in Monte Carlo.
Tennis is a funny sport, it can dish up all sorts of strange results however I believe that the new scoring system in Mens Doubles is allowing for these type of results to happen. It has breathed life into a sport that has had way too many dominating players in the past lift the Championship trophy way too often.
McLachlan and Uchiyama took home a share of just over $100,000 and perhaps a feeling of belonging in a sport where just winning a Challenger event is a remarkable show of talent let alone taking that Challenger form into battle against the 'big boys' of World Tennis.
These two guys may just have kick started their tennis careers, at least now they can afford to eat out........