Tennis: From Roland Garros struggler to champion

Michael Venus in action during the men's doubles final at the French Open. Photo / Photosport.

When Michael Venus takes time to reflect on his astonishing French Open doubles title triumph at Roland Garros, he will look back to a moment in his third round match as a turning point.

Venus and Harrison were one game away from crashing out of the tournament, trailing the Indian pair of Purav Raja and Divij Sharan 4-6, 5-6 with the Indians about to serve for the match.

In hindsight given what the Kiwi have gone on to achieve, over the next few minutes in that 3rd round encounter Venus would play the most inspired points of his tennis career.

Needing to break serve Venus made a couple of cracking returns in that 12th game and he and Harrison were able to force a tie breaker.

4-3 down in the breaker on serve Venus hit a couple of fantastic serves, a wonderful pick up volley and then a stunning return to get to 6-4, Venus and Harrison would close out the set 7 points to 5 in the breaker and carry the momentum into the decider. But it was the sequence of points from Venus that was the key.

The fact Venus had never won a match in Paris in three previous attempts prior to this year and that clay is his least favourite surface, makes his achievement even more notable.

The Roland Garros victory adds to his six titles at ATP tour level and it opens doors that he would never have dreamed would have been possible prior to arriving in Paris a little over a fortnight ago.

He will rise 24 places to 15 in the world when the new rankings come out tomorrow and he and Harrison will be five in the race to qualify for the ATP World Tour finals in London in November. That's where the top eight teams throughout the regular season square off in the round robin format before semi-finals and final.

So what next for the 29 year old Aucklander. Well he will check out of his Air B&B near the courts today and is scheduled to head to the Netherlands for his first ATP grass court tournament in the build-up to Wimbledon.

However the Roland Garros triumph means Harrison, ranked 41 in singles, is now seriously considering playing doubles at Wimbledon, having earlier told Venus he would skip the All England Club because of its best of five sets format in doubles. Venus has an agreement to play with Andre Sa during the grass court season and is entered in the S-Hertogenbosch tournament in the Netherlands this week.

So the Kiwi faces a difficult decision because while Harrison is focused on singles he is unlikely to want to play doubles at every event. Venus may be better off choosing a doubles specialist long term, but for the rest of this year could be tempted to play as much as possible with Harrison to try to qualify for the prestigious and lucrative year end championships.

Regardless of what he decides, he will be waking up tonight (New Zealand time) perhaps a bit sore in the head, but with a special trophy beside his bed and a tennis future that has been secured.

Matt Brown is at the French Open thanks to Emirates Airline​.