Venus, Murray lose tight match at US Open

Michael Venus and Jamie Murray have been knocked out of the US Open, going down 6-4 6-4 to the French duo of Nicolas Mahut and Pierre Hugues Herbert in their second round encounter.

Played in front of a large grandstand full of spectators, Venus dropped serve in the first set, while it happened to Murray in the second and despite having four break points against their opponents over the match they weren’t able to snare any of the breaks back.

Other than those two breaks, there wasn’t anything between the teams, but in top-level doubles, all it takes is a couple of points to go one way or the other to decide the outcome of the match.

Their exit means all New Zealand hopes now lie with Erin Routliffe and her Canadian partner Gaby Dabrowski, who will play against Wu Fang-hsien from Chinese Taipei and China’s Zhu Lin in the second round of the women’s doubles.

After the match, Venus was understandably disappointed, especially because they weren’t able to get those breaks back.

“Those guys have won every grand slam for a reason,” Venus said. 

“They’re obviously good players. Hubert has been out for a while, but he’s been back for the last few months.

“We got down a break early in each set and when you do that it frees up the other team and they didn’t give us anything to get back in it.

“We created some half chances, but couldn’t get those.

“If we could have held our serve earlier in those sets and stayed on serve, maybe the match tension or pressure could have been different in those situations. 

“Maybe we get some second serves or something, you never know. But that’s what happens when you get behind and try to play catch up against a good team, they’ll make you pay.”

Luck seemed to be on the side of Herbert and Mahut throughout the match. When there was an exchange at the net, it often went the way of the French players.

“There were a few reaction points and it felt like some of those 50/50 points we ended up on the wrong side of more often than not,” Venus said.

“With Jamie’s hands up there, we normally come out on the other side of those, but there wasn’t too much in it, they played well.”

Venus had already decided to take a break after the US Open, so won’t play in this month’s Davis Cup tie against Thailand in Invercargill.

“I head back to London with the family,” he said. 

“I’ll have a week off and then we’re off to Asia for three or four weeks in a row. Then it goes Basel, Vienna, Paris.

“Once we start again, it’s every week until the end of the year. So I’ll try to freshen up.

“I’m disappointed we lost, but in terms of our objectives of what we were individually trying to do in our team, we did those, but we didn’t execute well today. 

“We’ll continue to do those things, try to get better and wait 12 months to play here again!”