Bob and Mike Bryan: World Tour Finals Favorites or Facing Parity?

The doubles draw at the ATP World Tour Finals being held in London this week might be one of the deepest in years. There are Grand Slam champions (Jurgen Melzer and Philipp Petzschner, Max Mirnyi and Daniel Nestor) and Masters 1000 winners (Rohan Bopanna and Aisam-Ul-Haq Quereshi, Mahesh Bhupathi and Leander Paes, Michael Llodra and Nenad Zimonjic) among the mix.

And then there's Bob and Mike Bryan, who, like Mirnyi and Nestor, accomplished both feats over the course of the year, too.

Of course, there isn't much that the Bryans haven't accomplished.

The twins have long dominated men's doubles, owning the most team titles ever, including 11 Grand Slam crowns. They've also won a Bronze medal at the Olympics, a Davis Cup title and every Masters 1000 event except for the Indian Wells tournament. The Bryans haven't fared too shabby at the year-end championships, either, winning three times.

The team is in perfect form heading into the World Tour Finals, riding a two-tournament winning streak before the start of the event. Perhaps, though, in a bit of a shock, they were actually in a slump, going without a title over the summer hard-court season, which included two first-round losses, most noticeably at the U.S. Open.

Under the roof, the pair has turned that around, though the pain of missing out on winning the last Slam of the season still lingers. That could be enough to give them motivation to continue the hot streak they've been riding lately. They'll need that extra spark, too, because, as seen in their first round-robin match in London against Melzer and Petzschner, teams are fired up to play them.

The Bryans are quite used to being the hunted, having been so for years. They'll have to call on that to win their fourth year-end title.