Sriram Balaji and Andre Begemann scored the biggest upset of the tourney when they ousted the reigning Grand Slam champions Rajeev Ram and Andre Begemann in R1 of the ATP 250 U.S. Mens Clay Court Championships.

Mahitha caught up with the pair to get their thoughts on the big win.

Thoughts on the match
Sriram Balaji:

We didn’t have any expectations going into the match. We had a set of plans which we had to execute. I played both of them, not together, but separately.

I played against Austin twice last year. Rajeev and I played them way long back. We knew how they played and we can obviously see a lot of videos online. I’m glad we stayed strong.

Andre Begemann:
We had a lot of break points down but we just kept fighting and we got it through. Obviously we respect them a lot for their achievements. They’ve been on the tour for so many years.

Rajeev is still playing from the playing times in college. They’re individually great doubles players, great tennis players, great guys also. We knew that going into the match. We just prepared and really tried to stay one at a time today.

I don’t even know the stats. We must have had a lot of break points that we fought off. In the end it comes down to a couple of points. We know that the level is so close and today we’re the happy winners. We’re just really, really happy we got through.

Any key moments from the match?
I don’t know if there’s one turning point because we were down 15-40 in one game. Yeah, we were down.

Obviously the double fault from Rajeev at 5-6 in 2nd set tie break, helped us to get into the match tiebreak. It’s a battle either way. If that’s one turning point, of course we’re happy with a double fault from that point up.

In the match tiebreak we had a couple of points where we were up. We had the momentum. I (Andre) missed an easy volley on one and came up with a couple of good shots that they fought off with good volleys.

We lost those points and still just stayed positive and kept to our game plan really. I think that was the key in the end.

You’ve had a pretty tough start to the season. How does it feel to be here today?
It feels like it’s about time. We had a couple of really close matches, which didn’t go our way. Today it was a similar situation, but it went our way. We just have to take the positives and keep working on the things we need to work on.

You’re going to be playing Jeevan and Arjun next. They’re good friends of yours. How do you see the match going into it?
It’s another match. They’re really good friends, but oncourt we’re rivals. We’re going to give our best and then we’ll see.