Defeat for Venus in doubles second round and mixed at Australian Open

A difficult loss in the Australian Open doubles second round for Michael Venus and Jamie Murray.

In front of a packed court 8 crowd in near perfect conditions the pair were point-for-point up until the 11th game against Tomislav Brkio (Bosnia & Herzegovina) and Gonzalo Escobar (Ecuador), but that's when things changed.

They broke the serve of the left-hander Escobar to go ahead 6-5 and looked to have the first set sorted.

However Murray was then broken and the tiebreak featured a couple of stray points go the way of the Bosnian and Ecuadorian for a 7-5 victory in the breaker.

Into the second set games were even until the fifth when Murray was broken on a double fault, one of his five for the match. 

The eventual score 7-6(5) 6-4 in 1 hour 39 minutes to Brkio and Escobar. 

Venus and Tim Puetz made the quarters in Melbourne in 2022 before losing a tense battle to Nick Kyrgios and Tanasi Kokkinakis.

The New Zealander and Murray have had a mixed start to the year with a final in Adelaide.

In Auckland at the ASB Classic they suffered a tight three set defeat indoors and now a second round encounter at the Australian Open where two off service games from the Scot probably cost the match. 

The bad day for Venus continued in the mixed doubles as well where he and Hao-Ching 'Angel' Chan (Taipei) lost in the first round to Jelena Ostapenko (Latvia) and David Vega Hernandez (Spain) 2-6 7-6(5) 6-10 in 1 hour 25 minutes.