Venus feels optimistic ahead of French Open

Without playing together for a month, Michael Venus knows he and his German partner, Tim Puetz, will need to hit the clay running at Roland Garros this week.

Venus, who won the French Open with Ryan Harrison in 2017, partnered with Britain’s Jamie Murray in the lead up tournaments to the second grand slam of the year, but he has spent the past week practising with Puetz to get ready.

‘‘It’s disappointing I didn’t play the last few weeks with Tim, considering clay is his favourite surface,’’ Venus said.

‘‘But these things happen, we’ve been on court for a few days now and hopefully we can get some momentum going.’’

With Murray, they made semifinals in Estoril and Madrid, but lost in the first round in Rome. The reason why Venus wasn’t able to play with Puetz was because his usual partner had a foot injury.

‘‘He had a tear in his planta fascia, under his foot,’’ Venus explained. ‘‘He did it in Monte Carlo, in the match against Rajeev Ram and Joe Salisbury in the first set.

‘‘It was within a point and he felt a sharp pain in his foot. We thought about pulling out during the match, but then decided to play, because you never know what’s going to happen.’’

Venus and Puetz lost that match against the top doubles team in the world 6-4 6-3. Their first match together since then will be later this week, with the doubles draw being done today in Paris.

Although the French Open has begun, the main talking point in tennis circles is to do with Wimbledon, after three of the sport’s governing bodies, the ATP, WTA and ITF made decisions not to award any ranking points for the tournament.

This has been done following Wimbledon’s decision to ban Russian and Belarusian players from entering the grand slam, because of the invasion of Ukraine.

It was a controversial move by Wimbledon officials in the first place, but it’s an equally contentious decision by the three organisations.

For players who did well at Wimbledon last year, they won’t be able to defend their points and will drop down the rankings.

GETTY IMAGES Michael Venus and Tim Puetz have become one of the best doubles teams in the world since deciding to partner up together last year.