Tennis: Kiwi Michael Venus advances to Wimbledon doubles semifinals

Michael Venus said he was able to draw upon his experience at winning last year's French Open when he played on Centre Court on Wimbledon today.

Venus and his South African partner, Raven Klaasen defeated Britain's Jamie Murray and Bruno Soares from Brazil 6-7 7-6 5-7 7-6 6-4 in four hours 15 minutes to advance to Thursday's semifinal against Frederik Nielsen and Joe Salisbury.

The win in a match that had to be halted to close the Centre Court roof, will go down as one of the best in Venus' career and he said afterwards that having played in the final on Court Philippe Chatrier at Roland Garros last year helped ease his nerves.

"It definitely helped me out there today playing on that court and in that environment," Venus said.

"I felt like I really enjoyed my time on the court and it was a good feeling to have, because then I was able to relax and just play tennis.

"It has helped, but this is a different tournament and everyone's playing well at this point, so that's in the past and it's great to have those memories, but I've got to focus on what's happening now."

The players were off court for around 15 minutes between the fourth and fifth set while the roof closed and it was Venus and Klaasen who came back the stronger, getting out to a 5-2 lead and even having two match points in the following game.

However, the match was eventually won when Soares was broken to love when serving at 4-5.

"It wasn't as long as I thought it would be to close the roof, it closed pretty quick," Venus said.

"We spoke about things we felt had been working and what we could do better, also the tendencies of what they were doing and what they might be doing.

"So we came up with things we wanted to execute and we managed to pull through."

But that moment slipped away to win the match earlier in the fifth set, it could have handed all the momentum back to Murray and Soares and it took inner belief in Venus and Klaasen to get up again.

"5-2, 15-40, we had two match points there," remembered Venus.

"I missed the return on mine and then Raven had a second serve return. It came off the racquet flush but unfortunately it hit the tape and didn't go over.

"After having those match points, it's almost harder to serve out a match after that.

"So there were nerves in that game and we didn't play the game we wanted to play, but these things happen and we said at the change of ends at 5-4, that we've been playing well, let's stay positive and keep backing ourselves.

"We played a great game at 5-4 and finished it off."

Centre Court holds 15,000 spectators and there were around 10,000 there to watch this match.

Although most of them wanted Murray and Soares to win, they enjoyed a thrilling, high quality doubles match.

"It was good to see how many people stayed," Venus said.

"Maybe it would be nice to have a few more people cheering for us, but I think that's what happens when you play at home.

"But there were a few Kiwis there and you could hear them cheering and our box was great."

Earlier, Artem Sitak and Divij Sharan lost their quarterfinal match to Jack Sock and Mike Bryan 7-6 7-6 6-7 6-4, while New Zealand junior Lulu Sun lost to Xinyu Wang 7-6 6-3.