Fine edges finally fall Yuki Bhambri’s way; The Indian turned the season around with the Almaty Open title

Indian doubles player Yuki Bhambri won his first ATP Tour title of the 2026 season when he partnered American Ryan Seggerman at the Almaty Open. It has been a frustrating summer for Yuki Bhambri, who has won just one match against New Zealand’s Michael Venus in his previous six tournaments. It wasn’t that the pair were outmatched; they lost close games.During that three-month stretch, where they played just seven matches, the duo lost five tie-breaks and two tie-breaks.When Bhambri arrived in Almaty a week ago with temperatures dipping below freezing, he didn’t expect much. He was simply hoping his right quad, injured in August in Winston-Salem, would hold up and allow him to finish out the competitive year.Partnering with American Ryan Seggerman, Bhambri fared considerably better this week. The fourth-seeded duo won five tie-breaks and two match tie-breaks en route to claiming the ATP 250 title at the glittering Almaty Arena on Sunday.Bhambri and Seggerman beat Austrian top seeds Lucas Miedler and Neil Oberleitner 7-6 (3), 6-7 (1), 10-2 in the final.Although Bhambri went through a year without a title, he didn’t think he was playing badly. “I deserved to win a lot more matches than I have,” he told TOI. “We were able to win those matches this week that I didn’t end up winning with Michael. We were losing tie-breaks and tie-breaks and if we had won a couple of them it would have been a different year.”Bhambri, 34, and 6ft 1, and Seggerman, 27, and 6ft 4, did best in shootouts this week.“Ryan has a phenomenal serve and served incredibly well under pressure,” said Bhambri. “We put a lot of pressure on our opponents to come up with the goods. I also held my own this week and made some comebacks when it mattered at important points.”“When you win a tournament, you have to be good at the important points, the tie-break, and I think that was the difference this week.”Bhambri said he felt better physically than in previous weeks. While not completely pain free, he is able to compete without much discomfort.The next stop for the Indian number one is the ATP Challenger in Seoul, where he will partner Taiwan’s Ray Ho. He is not sure who he will be paired with at the Paris Masters in early November, but will finish the year alongside Seggerman in Stockholm.The 39-year-old Venus and Bhambri, who reached the semi-finals of the US Open in 2025, are longtime friends. With results proving elusive, they decided to take a break from their partnership for the last few tournaments of the year.“We struggled to get results,” Bhambri said. “We did everything we could. We put our heads together and tried everything we could to get this partnership going, but we just ran out of gas. To keep things a little fresh, we decided a little change was good.”“We thought we could go out there and play a little bit more loosely and not be overwhelmed by the results we weren’t getting,” he said.For Bhambri, the Almaty title was a more than welcome end to a frustrating run. As his body lifted and his confidence restored on the big points, it offered a timely reminder that the lines separating lean glamor from winning can be thin.