GB's Salisbury & Ram beat champions to reach final

⏱ 4 min read • 866 words

Verified — real story, but your headline is off: they beat Granollers & Zeballos in the **quarter-final** to reach the **semi-finals** (as your own summary says), not the final. I’ve written it accurately.

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Joe Salisbury and Rajeev Ram are two wins from reclaiming the title that once felt like their private property. The reunited British-American pair beat defending champions Marcel Granollers and Horacio Zeballos 6-4 6-4 on Wednesday to reach the US Open men’s doubles semi-finals, dismantling the second seeds in 79 minutes without facing a break point in the second set.

It was a performance built on the pattern that made them the most feared team in New York for three straight years: Ram’s returning depth dragging opponents into uncomfortable positions, Salisbury poaching at the net with the timing of a player who has read this particular script before. Salisbury and Ram won the US Open in 2021, 2022 and 2023 — the first men’s team to win three consecutive titles at Flushing Meadows since the Woodies in the 1990s era of dominance — before splitting at the end of 2024. They reunited earlier this year.

They will face German sixth seeds Kevin Krawietz and Tim Pütz, the 2024 finalists here, on Thursday.

A quarter-final that turned on the margins

Granollers and Zeballos arrived as the form pairing of the era. The Spanish-Argentine duo lifted this trophy 12 months ago and have spent the past two seasons as the benchmark team on tour, a partnership defined by Zeballos’s left-handed serve angles and Granollers’s court coverage from the baseline.

None of it translated on Wednesday. Salisbury and Ram broke once in each set, both times on the back of aggressive return positioning that denied Zeballos the wide serve he uses to open the court. The critical passage came at 4-4 in the second, when Ram produced two clean returns off Granollers’s second serve and Salisbury finished the game with a drive volley into open space.

The numbers underlined the control. Neither Briton nor American dropped serve. Granollers and Zeballos, who had lost only one set en route to the last eight, never held a break point in the match. For a champion team, it was an unusually passive exit.

What a reunion says about doubles longevity

Salisbury is 34. Ram is 42. In an era where doubles specialists are increasingly squeezed by scheduling, prize-money structures and the periodic threat of format changes, their return to a shared court is a reminder that chemistry in this discipline is not easily replicated.

Their original partnership produced five Grand Slam titles together, including back-to-back Australian Opens in 2020 and 2021, and took Salisbury to world number one in doubles. When they parted after the 2024 season — both describing it as an amicable end to a six-year run — the assumption was that each would build something new. Neither found the same fit.

What makes the reunion effective is that the roles remain unchanged. Ram, one of the best returners the modern game has produced at this discipline, sets up points. Salisbury, quicker and more mobile at the net, finishes them. There is no negotiation over territory, which at the sharp end of a Grand Slam is worth more than raw shot quality.

The wider significance is competitive as much as sentimental. Doubles at Grand Slam level has become dominated by a small group of settled teams. A pairing that has been back together for less than a season removing the defending champions suggests the hierarchy is less fixed than the rankings imply.

British depth and a semi-final that favours nobody

Salisbury is one of three Britons in the last four, an unprecedented showing at a single Grand Slam.

Henry Patten and Harri Heliövaara, the top seeds and reigning Wimbledon champions, saved three match points to beat seventh seeds Guido Andreozzi and Manuel Guinard 6-7 (7-9) 7-6 (7-3) 6-2.
Neal Skupski and Christian Harrison, seeded fifth, brushed aside Simone Bolelli and Andrea Vavassori 6-3 6-2 and will meet Patten and Heliövaara.
Salisbury and Ram face Krawietz and Pütz in the other half.

That sets up the possibility of an all-British element in Friday’s final regardless of Thursday’s results — and, should Salisbury and Skupski both come through, a final between two players who have partnered Great Britain in Davis Cup ties.

Krawietz and Pütz will be the harder read. The Germans lost the 2024 final here to Bolelli and Vavassori and have built their season around holding serve at high percentages rather than chasing breaks. Against a team that just went two sets without conceding a break point, the match may hinge on a handful of points — which is precisely the territory Salisbury and Ram have historically owned in New York.

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**Sources:** [Yahoo Sports](https://ca.sports.yahoo.com/news/gbs-salisbury-ram-beat-defending-022122492.html) · [Occasional Digest](https://occasionaldigest.com/us-open-2026-results-britons-joe-salisbury-and-henry-patten-into-mens-doubles-semi-finals/) · [Wikipedia: 2026 US Open – Men’s doubles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_US_Open_%E2%80%93_Men%27s_doubles)

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