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Big comeback means Daniel Nestor ends 2014 with a victory

Nestor's final match of 2014 was a win on Thursday. (Photo by Hugh Routledge/REX)
Nestor's final match of 2014 was a win on Thursday. (Photo by Hugh Routledge/REX)

Canadian doubles legend Daniel Nestor won't look back on this year's ATP World Tour Finals with great fondness.

But at least he didn't leave without a win.

The pair shakes hands after a match for the final time, after a win over Granollers-Lopez in London Thursday. (LEON NEAL/AFP/Getty Images)
The pair shakes hands after a match for the final time, after a win over Granollers-Lopez in London Thursday. (LEON NEAL/AFP/Getty Images)

Nestor and his now ex-partner Nenad Zimonjic of Serbia, who reunited for this one final tournament because they qualified as a team, were down 3-8 in the first-to-10 match tiebreak that decided their third and final round-robin match against Marcel Granollers and Marc Lopez of Spain on Thursday.

Somehow, in a final hurrah, with some especially inspired play by Nestor, they won it 11-9.

It was a meaningless victory in the sense that Nestor and Zimonjic were already 0-2 in the round-robin. They had to beat the Spaniards in straight sets to have even a mathematical chance of making the weekend semifinals so once they lost the first set in a tiebreaker, they were officially eliminated.

To add insult to injury – literally – Lopez had to take a medical timeout to be treated for a hamstring injury just three games into the second set. His mobility and serve were affected the rest of the way but even with that, Nestor and Zimonjic had to summon up some exceptional tennis with their backs to the wall to win it.

It pretty much summed up their tournament. The 7-6 (5), 6-3, 11-9 victory effectively eliminated Granollers and Lopez from the weekend as well, if that was any consolation.

And so Nestor's 2014 season ends, along with his two-act partnership with Zimonjic. It wasn't exacty an emotional moment. In the aftermath, Zimonjic put away his racquets. Nestor ate a banana. No bro-drama there.

He ends it with a 48-24 record on the season and total prize money of $649,107 US. That's nowhere near his best years. but it's a major step up from a year ago.

Nestor's prize money returned to near-average levels in 2014, and his ranking rebounded.
Nestor's prize money returned to near-average levels in 2014, and his ranking rebounded.

Nestor won just one title in 2013. His doubles earnings of $270,557 were his lowest since ... 1999, when the compensation on the ATP Tour wasn't anything close to what it is now. To give you an idea how long ago it was, the then 27-year-old was still a singles player, and actually earned nearly as much on the singles court as he did in doubles.

2013 was a season he began with Mahesh Bhupathi of India as a partner, moving on to Swede Robert Lindstedt (to say that didn't work out is an understatement) and then to fellow forty-something Leander Paes of India and, occasionally, young countryman Vasek Pospisil.

Nestor's ranking had dropped to No. 25 at the end of 2013, his lowest since Nov. 2000 after having been in the top 10 for all but a handful of weeks in the considerable interim. He's back up to No. 4.

So the reunion with Zimonjic, if it didn't bring the big titles they wanted and was hardly a love match, was at least lucrative. But their Grand Slam results diminished over the year, from a semifinal in Australia to a pair of quarter-finals at the French Open and Wimbledon, and a third-round loss at the U.S. Open.

Four titles in 2014, but no big ones, for Nestor and ZImonjic.
Four titles in 2014, but no big ones, for Nestor and ZImonjic.

Where does the 42-year-old go from here? Well, it seems he's headed to a partnership with another Indian player, Rohan Bopanna, for 2015.

Is that the best choice? It's hard to know without knowing all his options.

Nestor's first preference after his difficult 2013 would have been to play with young Davis Cup partner Pospisil, 18 years his junior. But Pospisil (as evidenced by his lack of aggression in going after his own Tour Finals doubles qualifying spot with American partner Jack Sock, a prize well within reach) remains focused on singles  and won't commit to playing doubles at all the bigger events that are Nestor's money-makers – the Grand Slams and Masters 1000 tournaments.

Still, Pospisil managed to play doubles 18 times this season, with various partners. It's a shame.

He told Tennis Canada's Tom Tebbutt Thursday that he had considered 6-foot-8 Marcelo Melo of Brazil, who is playing in the Tour Finals with Ivan Dodig of Croatia.

“I thought about Melo and he expressed some interest to play with me. It’s never an easy choice. You don’t know until you play with someone," Nestor said. "The matches that I played with Rohan so far, he’s played very well. I haven’t played well enough. I played well in Paris the first match that we won but the other matches I haven’t played a great level. I need to pick up my game and then we’ll see what happens.”

In three tournaments in the latter part of this season, Nestor and Bopanna went 1-3 together. That's not promising, but it's also inconclusive.

By Nestor's standards, Bopanna is a spring chicken; he turns 35 next March. In the summer of 2013, the big-serving Indian was at a career-best No. 3 in the world, but currently stands at No. 30.

That means  the pair won't have the high seeding that would help avoid the very top teams early in tournaments, at least to start. So they'll have to work their way up by beating the best.

In a perfect world, you would think the ideal partner for Nestor would be someone considerably younger, with good movement and a gigantic serve.

There weren't many other divorces among the top doubles teams to free up opportunities. If you look at some of the better singles players who seem willing to commit to playing doubles most weeks, there are few who can play the pure doubles Nestor requires.

Veteran lefthanders Jürgen Melzer and Feliciano Lopez might be two. The talented Italian Fabio Fognini played 24 doubles events this season but his effort level, to say the least, wavers from week to week and it's hard to see any style synergy between the two.

Melzer is likely to play 2015 with Philipp Petzschner, a good friend with whom he once won Wimbledon but who has been out with injury for nearly two years.

Our ideal candidate would be Sock, who played doubles in many of the big tournaments he entered after the Australian swing that opened the season, although not as many as Pospisil. He's young (just 22) and has a monster serve, underrated doubles skills and a bottomless pit of energy.

But Sock, too, may be focused on singles; the American ends the season at a career-best singles ranking of No. 42 and should now be able to enter most, if not all, of the top events in singles without having to qualify.

Sock might be a bit of an out-of-the-box choice for Nestor. Bopanna is a rather safe choice, one that might work well enough but doesn't have a ton of upside.

But looking at it, the options are decidedly limited. You'd think a legend who is one of the greatest doubles players in history, and still has some gas in the tank, would have his pick. But it turns out it's not nearly that easy – especially because there's absolutely no chance the Bryan twins will ever break up.