Tennis: Wins for Michael Venus and Artem Sitak at Wimbledon

Michael Venus. Photo / Photosport

It was a mixed day for the New Zealanders at Wimbledon, with wins for Michael Venus and Artem Sitak and their partners, while Marcus Daniell and Erin Routliffe both lost their matches.

Venus and Raven Klaasen quickly wrapped up their match against Lleyton Hewitt and Alex Bolt, which was carried over from the previous day and triumphed 7-5 6-2 3-6 6-1.

"That was ideal, it's always tough when you stop at a spot like that," Venus said of being able to end the match quickly on Thursday.

"You know you're close to the finish line, but in saying that if you play one sloppy game and they play well, then the match is all back on.

"So we tried to stay in the present, focus on the things we were doing and it worked, we managed to finish it quickly."

While there was plenty of attention on Hewitt in the lead up and during the match, cheered on by a large and vocal contingent of Australians, the match was fairly one-sided.

"The first set we worked our way into it and figured things out and then towards the end of it we played well," Venus said.

"We had a great second set, the third set we had some break points, didn't get them and had one loose game.

"So we took a little break, said keep going with the thing we're doing and we'll get chances and we managed to do that."

It was also a four-set victory for Sitak and his partner Divij Sharan, who beat Radu Albot from Moldova and Tunisia's Malek Jaziri 7-6 6-7 6-3 6-2.

"The first two sets were really tight, very close," said Sitak afterwards.

"The second set tiebreak ended 10-8 to them and there were a few crazy points in there.
"So it was great for us to regroup after that and come out strong to win the last two sets 6-3 6-2, playing much better, hitting the returns and making the serves."

For Marcus Daniell there is just the mixed doubles left to focus on as he and Wesley Koolhof bowed out to the Indian pairing of Sriram Balaji and Vishnu Vardhan 7-6 6-4 7-6, with there being just one break of serve in the entire match.

"I don't think we dropped too much," Daniell said of the level he and Koolhof played at.

"We had to play tough to hang with them for those three sets and we did well to stay within a break of them in the second set and we created maybe one half chance there and didn't take it.

"In the first tiebreaker we made one or two unforced errors, which gave them the advantage and in the second they came up with some unbelievable shots.

"I feel like if we would have won that match it would have been against the grain."

"We were thinking at some point their level would drop and we'd be able to turn it around, but that didn't happen."

Routliffe and Alexa Guarachi put up a gallant fight against the third seeds from the Czech Republic Katerina Siniakova and Barbora Krejcikova, going down 6-2 2-6 6-2.

"It's good that we were there with them," Routliffe said.

"But there were a couple of points where we should have closed some game points. So it is disappointing."