If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, and try again.
Jamie Murray and Michael Venus did just that on Saturday at the Kinoshita Group Japan Open Tennis Championships, where they edged Nathaniel Lammons and Jackson Withrow 7-6(5), 2-6, 14/12 in a tense semi-final clash.
American duo Lammons and Withow saved four match points from 5/9 in the Match Tie-break and denied their opponents a further three times on match point before the British-Kiwi team finally sealed a one-hour, 45-minute triumph in Tokyo. Murray and Venus will now face Rinky Hijikata and Max Purcell in the championship match on Sunday as they chase their fifth ATP Tour crown of the year.
Victory on Sunday would also be a further boost for Murray and Venus’ Nitto ATP Finals qualification prospects. They leapfrogged Lammons and Withrow into eighth in the Pepperstone ATP Live Doubles Teams Rankings after Saturday’s win, and would move within 47 points of seventh-placed Rajeev Ram and Joe Salisbury with the Tokyo crown.
Stefanos Tsitsipas and Petros Tsitsipas saved two match points in the Match Tie-break to defeat Monaco’s Romain Arneodo and Austria’s Sam Weissborn in Antwerp to reach their first ATP Tour final as a team. In Sunday’s final the Greek brothers will meet Uruguay’s Ariel Behar and Czech Adam Pavlasek.
In Stockholm, India’s Yuki Bhambri and Great Britain’s Julian Cash will meet Kazakhstan’s Andrey Golubev and Ukraine’s Denys Molchanov in Sunday’s final.
Bhambri and Cash defeated Dutchmen Tallon Griekspoor and Bart Stevens 6-7(8), 6-3, 10-3 in Saturday’s semi-finals. Golubev and Molchanov upset fourth seed Robert Galloway and Albano Olivetti 7-5, 6-2.
[NEWSLETTER FORM]