Top seeds and recently anointed doubles co-world No.1’s Lukasz Kubot and Marcelo Melo have been bundled out the Australian Open by the first-time pairing of Ben McLachlan of Japan and German Jan-Lennard Struff after nearly three hours at Margaret Court Arena.
“We knew we were going to be up for a tough fight there against the No.1 seeds,” McLachlan said after the 6-4 6-7(4) 7-6(5) win. “Jan played unbelievable, he was smoking those returns. This is just too good.”
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McLachlan and Struff took it up to the 2017 Wimbledon champions and Nitto ATP Finals runners-up right from the start, taking the first set and fighting hard before relinquishing the second in a tiebreaker.
The battle continued into the decider where, once again, a tiebreaker was required to separate them. This time, the experience of the Polish/Brazilian partnership was not enough as McLachlan and Struff rode a wave of crowd support to victory.
New Zealand-born McLachlan, 25, who began playing under the Japanese flag last year, though he is still based in Queenstown, is enjoying the best fortnight of his career, only getting together with Struff in Melbourne after the German texted him out of the blue to see if he would be interested.
Meanwhile, Mike and Bob Bryan have once again reached the semifinals in Melbourne after dispatching Marcin Matkowski and Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi 6-1 6-4 in just 66 minutes at Rod Laver Arena.
“We’ve played these guys over 50 times now, so we come in prepared,” they said. “We just gotta execute and today we did.”
The American brothers – seeded sixth here – played a sublime match, looking every bit like they could add to their 18 major titles this week; and perhaps emboldened by the test of needing to recover from a one-set deficit in each of their previous three rounds.
“As far as the tournament goes, we’re getting better every match, which is a great thing,” they added. “We’re putting ourselves in contention to win this title and that’s what we come down here for.”
The Bryans started out on fire, racing to 5-0 lead and holding set points to keep the Polish/Pakistani outfit from even troubling the scoreboard. But to their credit, there were better signs for Matkowski and Qureshi after that, as they pushed for a break, but there was still plenty of work to be done.
While they continued to lift their game and create a contest in the second set, it was just not their best day in the office as the Bryans simply had all the answers.
The Bryans will now face the winners of Aussie favourites Lleyton Hewitt and Sam Groth and Columbian stalwarts Juan Sebastian Cabal and Robert Farrah, the No.4 seeds, while McLachlan and Struff will wait for the winner of Kiwi/Brit combo Marcus Daniell and Dom Inglot who play No.7 seeds Oliver Marach of Austria and Croatian Mate Pavic.