Venus and Routliffe lose respective doubles encounters

New Zealand’s top ranked doubles player Michael Venus and his German partner Tim Puetz have been knocked out in the first round of ATP 500 tournament in Vienna.

Venus and Puetz have been beaten 6-4 6-4 in an hour and 8 minutes by the top seeded Croatians Nikola Mektic and Mate Pavic, the Olympic doubles gold medallists.

It didn’t start well for Venus and Puetz with the Kiwi broken in his opening service game on the deciding point and from there, games went with serve for the remainder of the first set.

The first four games of the second set went with serve before Puetz was broken and the Croatians were able to consolidate, and hold serve throughout to win the match.

Meanwhile Erin Routliffe and her American partner Kaitlyn Christian have had a disappointing loss in their final WTA tournament of the season. The top seeds at the Transylvania Open in Romania have been beaten 7-5,5-7 10-7 by Russians Alena Fomina and Ekaterina Yashina in 1 hour 46 minutes.