So in the week that his regular doubles partner Ross Hutchins retires from professional tennis, Colin Fleming teamed up again with Jonny Marray (2012 men's doubles Wimbledon champion). The pair last played together in 2013 and reached several finals, but had never won an event as a team (if you don't include the Davis cup rubber against Russia ). Ross having made a come back after the recovery from the cancer that took him out most of 2012/2013 season, has decided that the time was right to hang up his professional racquet for good. He is the Tournament director of Queens Club, which he took on this year and the tournament proved a great successful for him. This meant that Colin would be needing a new partner for the rest of the year and his own career. Jonny hasn't really had a set partner since his victory at Wimbledon in 2012. Hopefully this pairing will be together for a while and be successful.
Their first tournament together was the ATP Challenger in Istanbul. Their combined ranking points meant they were top seeds, and throughout the tournament they certainly lived up to this. Progressing through the first few rounds without any trouble they made it all the way to the final. This proved to be their biggest test in Istanbul. Colin and Jonny made the best start to the final by breaking when needed and taking the first set 6-4. The second set didn't start off well, however and they were soon 1-4 down. They managed to break serve and get to 2-5 but the last game of the second set went against them and they lost that set 2-6. This took them into a Champions Tie break set, first to 10. Again, they started off slowly, and this went to 2-5. However, this is when Colin and Jonny stepped things up and levelled the score to 8-8, they just needed to keep their nerve and break once as the score stood at 9-8. They took the final point of the match to win their first title together. Colin and Jonny now move onto the main ATP tour event in Metz next week, however, as their combined ranking is not quite high enough for direct entry they have temporarily split Colin will partner Michael Venus of New Zealand and Jonny pairs up with another British Wimbledon champion Jamie Murray.