Tyra Grant & Iva Jovic win Orange Bowl again, first team in 30 years to repeat

The all-American doubles team of Tyra Grant and Iva Jovic made recent history this weekend in Plantation, Fla. by successfully defending the Orange Bowl doubles title they first won last year—becoming the first team since 1993, when tournament records began, to repeat. 

Grant and Jovic, the No. 3 seeds, toppled No. 1-seeded Czechs Alena Kovackova and Laura Samsonova in Saturday's final 6-4, 6-2 to etch their names in the history books at the storied event, won by some of the game's greatest players since it first began in 1947. (Italy's Maria Paola Zavagli won back-to-back Orange Bowl doubles titles in 1994-95, but with two different partners.)

On their way to the title, the American duo beat No. 2 seeds Hannah Klugman of Great Britain and their fellow American, Kaitlin Quevedo, in the semifinals, also in straight sets, after having been stretched to a match tiebreak in their first-round and quarterfinal wins. 

The win ends a successful 2023 season for the American pair: They were teammates on U.S.'s title-winning junior Billie Jean King Cup team in November, while the 15-year-old Grant won the girls' doubles title at Roland Garros in June with Clervie Ngounoue.

But Grant and Jovic were not the only American champions in Plantation: The boys' 18s doubles title was also won by an all-American team, and the U.S. swept the boys' and girls' 16s singles titles thanks to two New Yorkers, Queens' Dominick Mosejczuk and Brooklyn's Leena Friedman. In the oldest boys' doubles bracket, unseeded Andrew Delgado and Matthew Forbes toppled No. 1 seeds Iliyan Radulov of Bulgaria and Rei Sakamoto of Japan in a second-round thriller, 6-7(8), 7-6(9), [10-3], and rode that momentum through to their biggest international triumph.