Michael Venus and Nikola Mektic came through a tense opening match in the men’s doubles at Wimbledon, despite a large crowd cheering against them.
They have defeated the British wildcard recipients Lui Maxted and Connor Thompson 6-4 7-6(4) on Court 8 to advance to the second round.
Although on paper this looked like a good match-up for the tournament’s No 8 seeds, they were pushed hard by the young Brits, with just one break of serve in the opening set.
When Mektic was serving at 4-5 in the second set, he came under pressure and needed to save a set-point, which he successfully did.
Maxted had a break point to defend in the following game and the set ended up going into a tiebreak.
Venus double faulted at 2-3, to give the British team a good lead at the change of ends.
But Venus and Mektic won the next four points, to edge close to the victory and on match point the Croatian hit an unreturnable serve.
Despite playing against two opponents who aren’t yet playing on the Tour, Venus said he and Mektic expected this to be a tough match.
“They both played college in the States and you can see the calibre of the guys coming out of college these days, with Cam (Norrie) and Jacob Fearnley,” Venus said.
“So their level is good and we thought it would be a tough match.
“We didn’t know too much about them, so we were trying to feel things out and figure things out during the match.
“I thought we took care of our service games really well,” he added.
“Obviously, got a break in the first set, and we had a couple kind of half chances in the second set.
“Then fought off a set point at 5-4 and had a couple break points in at 5-5 and didn’t get that and got down in the breaker. It was a terrible double fault! Then managed to right the ship and get through.”
Something both teams needed to deal with was the earlier than expected time for the match.
It was scheduled to be the fourth match on Court 8, so it could have been early evening that the players went on. However the three prior matches were all over quickly and Venus said they had to rush their preparations.
“I think it was 2.55pm they called us,” Venus said.
“We finished warming up at 2pm. We saw what the scores were and everything was going fast, so quickly had some food, then showered, got changed and got everything ready, and then was straight on.
“So it was all quite rushed. I thought the very earliest we would have gone on looking at the schedule would have been 3.30pm if the matches went super fast. But I was anticipating it would be more like 4.30-5pm.
Although Venus said it was a rush for himself and Mektic, he felt it would have been the same for Maxted and Thompson.
“It’s a fine line, especially when you’re playing fourth on,” he said.
“You don’t want to be here sitting around all day and then matches go long. At the same time, you don’t want to be rushing. So it’s always a tricky decision.”