Their ATP World Tour Finals semi-final may not have gone the way they had hoped but Jamie Murray and Bruno Soares were still all smiles as they received the world number one doubles trophy on Saturday night.
The duo, who were confirmed as the year-end top pairing on Friday, fell to a 6-1, 6-4 defeat at the hands of South Africa’s Raven Klaasen and American Rajeev Ram in their semi-final clash at London’s O2 Arena.
They were unable to match the performance of Murray’s younger brother Andy - who earlier clinched a spot in the singles final after an emphatic battle with Milos Raonic - suffering elimination from the season finale in exactly an hour.
Klaasen and Ram, making their ATP World Tour Finals debut, raced to take the first set in just 21 minutes, before quickly taking control in the second with an early break of Brazilian Soares’ serve.
Murray and Soares managed to fight back to 3-3, but it wasn’t to be for the pair as Soares had his serve broken once more as Ram and Klaasen served out for victory – they face Henri Kontinen and John Peers in Sunday’s final.
“I don’t feel on top of the world right now because we just lost, but we’ve had an incredible year and I’ve had a lot of fun playing with Bruno,” said Murray.
“We obviously hoped for great things, we probably didn’t necessarily think we would end the year at number one when we started playing, but we won a couple of Grand Slams and we were pretty consistent through the rest of the year and we’re really happy.”
Sportsbeat 2016