Daniell and Sitak bow out of respective tournaments

Disappointment for New Zealand doubles player Marcus Daniell and his Austrian partner Philipp Oswald in their quarter final at the ATP 250 tournament in Munich. The fourth seeds have been beaten in straight sets by the German pair of Yannick Hanfmann and Dominik Koepfer.  The German pair have won 7-5 (1) 6-4 to reach the semi-finals. Daniell and Oswald will now head to Madrid for the Masters 1000 tournament next week. However they are several places out from making the draw and will need to rely on withdrawals.

Artem Sitak and his partner Jan Zielinski have been beaten in the Rome Challenger tournament by Italian veteran Paolo Lorenzi and Pablos Varilias. It was a marathon battle lasting 2 hours and 5 minutes which the Italian and Peruvian combination won 7-6 (4) 7-6 (4).

There has been some Kiwi success this week however. Erin Routliffe is playing in the ITF US $60,000 tournament in Charlottesville where she and Indonesian Aldila Sutjadi are through to the second round after a 6-2 6-4 win over American Emma Bektas and Britain’s Tara Moore.