Colin Fleming and Ken Skupski won their first ATP Tour doubles title at the Open de Moselle in Metz, France, on Sunday. It was just the duos first ever direct entry into an top ATP event and only their 4th event at the top ATP Level after three wildcards early in the year at the 3 British grass court events (Queens, Nottingham and Wimbledon).

The duo beat one of the top doubles teams, the French pairing of Arnaud Clement and Michael Llodra on a champions tie-break 10-5 in the final after the first two sets were shared 2-6 6-4. The victory all the more impressive as the Frenchmen were on home soil.

The victory pushes Scotland’s Fleming up to 79 in the doubles world rankings, while England’s Skupski goes to 76.

Fleming and Skupski were not used in Britain’s Davis Cup defeat by Poland, though strong consideration to use them needs to be seriously considered, these twp guys know how to win doubles matcher – And that is perhaps the most important point – The usual davis cup doubles players Ross Hutchins or previously Jamie Murray all play with a partner from another country usually.

After winning the event Fleming, from Linlithgow, near Edinburgh in Scotland said

This is our first ATP title and no-one can ever take that away from us, But in terms of the long-term plan, the ranking points are so important because it means we’re closer to playing ATP-level events all the time, which is where we want to be. We were just pleased to get into the main draw because we’ve spent weeks going to ATP event after ATP event and being bottom of the list of entrants and not getting in. We kept working hard though and kept patient and eventually it happened for us. We got off to a rough start in the final, through a combination of them playing really well and us being a little bit overawed. We’d played all our matches on the second court and the final was on the stadium court and it was a very different atmosphere, it was very noisy. We had a lot of tough matches this week – we won our second round 11-9 in the tiebreaker and we could easily have lost that one, so to win the title is amazing.”

Skupski, from Liverpool, added:

This is our first direct acceptance at ATP World Tour level. In the three that we’ve played we’ve beaten the Bryan brothers and Melo-Sa, who are top 20. So we always knew that we were capable of beating top guys. These guys (Clement-Llodra) are very good and they outplayed us from the start but we kept plugging away and we found a way to get back into it and then we felt we had a chance. We tried to influence the Match tie-break early and we were fortunate to do so. We feel like we’ve got a good chance to break into the top 50 now.

Flemming and Skupski have been used to winning recently, over the last 12 months they have won 4 challenger events been in the final of a further 5, won 6 futures (level below challenger) events and even had time to beat the world number 1 doubles team the Bryan Brothers in their maiden ATP event at Queens – Not bad 12 months and with their ranking no good enough for entry direct into ATP events watch out for Team Flemski in 2010.

Update : Flemski have gained direct entry into the St Petersburg Open which starts on the 25th October 2009.

The British wild card team of Colin Fleming and Ken Skupski, who stunned the number 1 ranked team in the world the Bryan brothers last week at Queen’s Club have claimed yet another scalp.

They defeated the 15th ranked team in the world Brazilian duo Marcelo Melo and Andre Sa 6-4, 4-6, 10-8 at the AEGON Championships at Eastbourne.

Skupski and Fleming are really grabbing the opportunity they have been given over the last two weeks – last week’s Queens Club event was the first ever ATP tour level the event the duo have competed at, between them they had only ever played three ATP tour level matches.

The duo have been playing together since October 2008 and have so far posted great results on the futures and challengers tour and are proving that they belong on the full tour. They posted two wins last week at Queens before losing a championship tie break to the 5th ranked team in the world after they themselves had match points.

Fleming will be doubly glad to have posted a win today after losing his singles match yesterday, he gave up a chance to qualify for the singles at Wimbledon to take the wild card here in both doubles and singles events.

The duo will face the winner of the match between 3rd seeds Bruno Soares & Kevin Ullyett and Jonathan Erlich and Britain’s own Jamie Murray, that match will be settled by a championship tie break after the match was halted at 1 set each this evening.

Other Brit Ross Hutchins and his Partner Stephen Huss lost yesterday 4-6 7-6(4) 10-3 to 2nd seeds Knowles & Buhpathi. Hutchins is currently the 34th best ranked doubles player in the world.

It was a good 1st day for the Brits at Eastbourne, three of the four Brits in first round made it through to the second round of the AEGON Championships.

British number 3 and 4, James Ward and Josh Goodall actually recorded their first ATP Tour matches and were joined in the second round by British number 2 Alex Bogdanovic.

The only blip for the British men was a tightly fought loss for Colin Fleming who went down 7-6 (7-2) 1-6 6-3 to Yen-Hsun Lu of Chinese Taipei. Fleming had been rewarded for his performances on the challenger singles and double circuit and his doubles showing at Queens Club last week with partner Ken Skupski.

Bogdanovic defeated Ivo Minar 6-4 7-6 (7-3) to record his first ATP Tour win of the season while Goodall thrashed Tatsuma Ito 6-4 6-1 and James Ward triumphed 6-1 6-3 against Victor Crivoi, a Romanian ranked 137 places above him. Ward spoke to reporters

I’ve been looking forward to this tournament for a while and obviously getting a wildcard was great, I went out there today and played well and that will stand me in good stead for Wimbledon next week.

All three British players have both been awarded Wimbledon wildcards.

4 seeds have already fallen, including no.1 seed Igor Andreev, 3rd seed Paul-Henri Mathieu, 5th seed Mikhail Youzhny and 7th seed Andreas Seppi.

It doesn’t quite attract as many good players as Queens Club, but with the revised points system implemented by the ATP tour it means that the new Men’s AEGON Championships at Eastbourne is just as important as the AEGON Championships Queens Club. Both tournaments are now ATP World Tour 250 tennis tournaments.

The Eastbourne event had only been a women’s only event previously and the mens event was played at Nottingham, but the Nottingham tournament has come to an end and moved to Eastbourne.

Unfortunately Andy Murray is not competing, the top 4 seeds at the event are Igor Andreev, Dmitry Tursunov, Paul-Henri Mathieu and Fabrice Santoro.

The event gives British players a huge opportunity to gain valuable ATP points and experience of competing at a higher level. The draw has 4 British players including British number 2, 3 and 4  Alex Bogdanovic, Joshua Goodall and James Ward. The other Brit in the singles draw is 10th ranked Brit Colin Fleming.

Fleming is being rewarded for his good results in both singles and doubles this year, he gave up his place in the Qualifier event for the real Wimbledon Qualifier’s last week to take up his wild card here this week  after he and partner Ken Skupski did so well in the doubles at Queens and the team also gained a wild card for doubles event here at Eastbourne.

All brits have avoided any seeds in the first round. Colin Fleming takes on Yen-Hsun Lu, the player who knocked out Andy Murray in the first round of the Olympics.

Colin Fleming and Ken Skupski have just lost their quarter final match against Lukasz Kubot & Oliver Marach. The match went to a third set championship tie breaker after the Brit duo had claimed the first set and missed three match points in the second set.

Kubot & Oliver Marach finally claimed the match 5-7 7-6(7-3) 10-7 in 1 hour and 45 minutes.

Fleming and Skupski took the first set 7-5, the crucial break of serve coming in the 11th game. The second set went a to a tie break, but not before the British team a secured a break of serve and Ken Skupski served for the match. At 40-15 the Brits had two match points but were not able to convert. Importantly there was no sign of a “choke”, simply out played by Kubot and Marach who leveled the match and forced the tie break.

Kubot and Marach secured an early mini-break in the tie break before a second mini-break secured the second set.

The Brits claimed an early mini break in the super tie break courtesy of a double fault but lost it and Kubot & Marach leveled at 5-5. After that Fleming and Skupski drop two service points to give Kubot & Marach 4 match points at 9-5. They managed to save two them before ultimately losing the final point on their own serve.

Their performance tonight and against the Bryan’s on Wednesday proved that these two Brits have a big future  in the men’s doubles game. They didn’t just put in a typical good effort tonight, Fleming and Skupski matched the 6th best team in the world point for point and the match was settled on the finest of margins.

Watch out for these two at Eastbourne next week and Wimbledon the week after. The pair have been granted wild cards for both these events. The typical Brit display would see these two go out in the first round, but Skupski and Fleming are used to winning this season (see below) and these two could well buck the trend of “0ther Brits” at Wimbledon.

Kubot & Marach will next face the team of Wesley Moodie and Mikhail Youzhny who won 7-5 6-3 this evening. It was Mikhail Youzhny second match of the day after losing to James Blake earlier in the day.