New Zealand doubles player Marcus Daniell and his Dutch partner Wesley Koolhof have come agonisingly close to beating the top seeds in the quarter finals at the China Open in Beijing.
Daniell and Koolhof have lost 5-7 7-6 (4) 14-12 to Australian open champions Oliver Marach and Mate Pavic at the ATP 500 tournament.
Games went with serve in the first set until the 12th game when Marach was broken. The second set was equally tight with Daniell and Koolhof untroubled on serve, in fact they only lost five points on serve and their opponents lost just three, before going to a tie break which the top seeds won to force a deciding match tie break.
It was tight all the way in the match tie break (first to 10 points but win by 2) with Marach and Pavic edging in front 7-5 and holding their first match point at 9-8. But Koolhof won both his service points to bring up match point for him and Daniell at 10-9. Marach saved the first match point and then brought up a second match point for the top seeds. But Daniell answered with two service points to get second match point but that's as close as it got for the Kiwi/Dutch combination as Koolhof lost his next service point.
Daniell will now turn his attention to indoors in Europe before finishing his season next month.
Meanwhile New Zealand's top ranked doubles player Michael Venus plays his semi-final at the ATP 500 Japan Open in Tokyo later today.
Venus and his South African partner Raven Klaasen face the wildcard pair of Britain's Joe Salisbury and Japan's Yasutaka Uchiyama who ousted second seeds Jamie Murray and Bruno Soares.
