WHEN one Murray falls just short these days, the other picks up the slack. Last night, Jamie Murray won his second Grand Slam men’s doubles title of the year and his career, as he and Bruno Soares crushed Spain’s Pablo Carreno Busta and Guillermo Garcia-Lopez 6-2, 6-3 in a one-sided US Open final.

Andy Murray may have missed out on a second US Open title, the exhaustion of a crowded summer finally getting to him in the quarter-finals, but Jamie was not about to let slip the chance for more family and personal glory.

“It’s a great feeling,” Murray said. “These tournaments are the hardest to win. The last couple of years I kind of found a way to play my best tennis in them, which wasn’t always the case.

“Maybe I’ll start to move out of the shadows a little bit. There’s still a long way to go – he’s had a great year, he did three Grand Slam finals, winning Wimbledon, Olympic gold, but just couldn’t win this one. Yeah, get it up you Andy.”

Given the place singles has in the history of the game, Jamie’s achievements are unlikely ever to eclipse those of his younger brother, but for a couple of boys from Dunblane, the pair have done pretty well.

Watching Andy win his titles, Jamie said, had helped inspire him, especially over the past few years.

“I think the last kind of 18 months have started to really kind of show what I can do on the tennis court,” he said. “I think we have been able to do a lot of amazing things in our lives on a tennis court. I guess when you’re kind of living in the moment you don’t always think about all that stuff.

“But yeah, [when] you kind of take a moment and look at it, it is amazing what we have been able to do from a country of no history of tennis at all. I get quite emotional kind of talking about it.”

Watching Murray and Soares outplay the less experienced Spanish pairing of Carreno Busta and Garcia-Lopez in every facet of the game, it seemed much longer than a year since Murray and the Australian John Peers were beaten in the final at Flushing Meadows, their second successive Grand Slam final defeat.

That match proved to be the last slam the pair played together, as Murray made the switch to Soares and the pair have gelled brilliantly, adding the US Open title to the Australian Open crown they won on their slam debut.

The famed coach, Louis Cayer, watching from the stands, has worked wonders with Murray over the past few years, convincing him to believe in his talent and play to his strengths rather than worry about technical deficiencies.

His partnership with Soares is supremely slick when on song, and on another hot and humid day everything worked, after they had recovered from losing Murray’s serve in the opening game.

Against opponents who didn’t seem sure whether to serve and volley, stay back or mix it up, the fourth seeds were able to dominate at the net through Murray’s sharp volleying, while the ever-cool-looking Soares ripped brilliant returns and curled pinpoint lobs over the Spaniards’ heads.

In truth, the hard work was done in the quarter-finals and semi-finals, when the pair took out Chris Guccione and Andre Sa, and then top seeds Nicolas Mahut and Pierre-Hugues Herbert. But they still needed to get it done and after that opening game they looked nerveless, winning six of the next seven games to take the first set.

Murray and Soares both saved break points in their first service games of the second set but between times, they broke Carreno Busta again to lead 3-0.

The Spanish pair tried to get back into it and held their own on serve, but the damage had been done and Murray, who’d needed treatment for a stiff neck early in the match, served out for victory.

The win also means that Murray and Soares are now right in the hunt to finish the year as the world’s top-ranked pair.

“Before this tournament we were pretty far behind, even though we are number three,” Murray said. “Now I think we are pretty close in the race again. It’s definitely a goal.

“From the beginning of the year, the number one goal [was] to qualify to London, and we did that pretty early. Now we are in [with] a chance to win it.”