Sitak, Daniell win again
THE success keeps coming in the men’s doubles at Wimbledon for New Zealand players with Artem Sitak and Marcus Daniell both involved in wins yesterday.
Playing on court 11, Sitak and his American partner Nicholas Monroe defeated the Australian duo of Matt Reid and John-Patrick Smith 7-6 6-3 7-6 in 123 minutes.
Finishing just moments later on court 16, Daniell and Marcelo Demoliner from Brazil knocked out another all-Australian team, Thanasi Kokkinakis and Jordan Thompson, 6-4 7-6 6-4, also in 123 minutes.
While they were both straight set victories each match was hard-fought.
‘‘It was a great match from us, we really connected and played well together,’’ Sitak said.
‘‘It was solid throughout, the other guys have really big serves, one lefty, one righty and it’s the perfect combination for doubles.
‘‘But we handled it well and in the two tiebreaks we stepped it up, played aggressively, with good energy, we were a really good team out there.
Sitak and Monroe comfortably took the first set tiebreak 7-2 and won the second set in 29 minutes.
The third set also went to a tiebreak, where Sitak and Monroe got to a 6-1 lead, but then lost four points in a row.
‘‘That was a bit tricky,’’ admitted Sitak.
‘‘It’s not like we played bad points. There were two good returns, I had one volley where I could have put it away, but didn’t, but I still hit a good one and JP guessed the right way.
‘‘At 6-5 I had to really calm down and it was just another point and I knew what I had to do, return low to set my partner up at the net, which is exactly what I did.’’
In the third round, Sitak and Monroe will play the winners of the match between Bob and Mike Bryan and Max Mirnyi and Matkowski. Meanwhile, on the other side of centre court, Daniell and Demoliner won equally impressively.
‘‘We played well again today, volleyed really well, returned well and most of the time served well,’’ Daniell said.
Daniell and Demoliner have been told they won’t have to play again until tomorrow against Ken and Neal Skupski from Britain, who knocked out the eighth seeds Rohan Bopanna and Edouard Roger-Vasselin in the second round, while Kokkinakis and Thompson beat ninths seeds JeanJulien Rojer and Horia Tecau in the first round.
So it will be the third match in a row where Daniell and Demoliner have avoided seeds.
‘‘We’ve seen in the last few grand slams that seedings don’t mean that much these days,’’ Daniell said.
‘‘A lot of the seeds are getting knocked out early, the guys we beat today knocked out seeds in the first round and the eighth seeds were knocked out in the second round.’’
‘‘You can only play who’s on the other side of the net from you and honestly for us we won’t think any different because it’s the Skupskis.’’
Later in the day, Sitak teamed up with Olga Savchuk of Ukraine to beat his doubles partner Monroe and compatriot Asia Muhammad, 7-5 6-4. GETTY IMAGES
However, Daniell didn’t fare as well. He and Darija Jurak from Croatia lost 6-3 7-6 to Mate Pavic of Croatia and Lyudmyla Kichenok of Ukraine.
The third Kiwi still alive in the men’s doubles, Michael Venus, will join American Ryan Harrison – the tournament 10th seeds and current French Open champions – to play Swedish duo Johan Brunstrom and Andreas Siljestrom in the second round today.