After the retirement of Andrei Pavel and the struggles and poor form Victor Hanescu has been passing lately, Romania's only hope of crowning a local champion in Bucharest rested on Horia Tecau's shoulders. Tecau, who alongside Swede Robert Linstedt forms one of the hottest doubles teams on the ATP tour, has been in ominous form this season. He started the year superbly by collecting his first Grand Slam crown at the Australian Open, where he teamed-up with American Bethanie Mattek-Sands for the mixed-doubles title. Nevertheless, his past experiences in Bucharest did not leave up to the expectations. In all his previous participations, he has never passed the quarterfinals. This also happened last year, when he and Linstedt were top seeds.
Horia was determined to turn his faith around though in 2012 and after some excruciating wins earlier in the week, he finally saw his dream come true. The toughest challenge came in the semifinals, when the Swedish-Romanian duo had to recover from a 5-7,0-3 deficit against Australians Paul Hanley and Jordan Kerr to ultimately secure their berth in the final. In the grand finale, Tecau and Linstedt sealed a 7-6,6-3 victory over Jeremy Chardy and Lukasz Kubot, making Tecau the first Romanian winner on home soil since Andrei Pavel and Gabriel Trifu collected the doubles title in 1996. The Romanian was delighted by the triumph which makes this day one of the most beautiful of his life.
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| Tecau and Linstedt have now won seven titles together, but for the Romanian this surely is the sweetest triumph of them all. |
photos: Raed Krishan
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