Erin Routliffe has stunning win in Miami, while Michael Venus loses in nail-biter

It is a day of mixed fortunes for New Zealand's top doubles players at the Miami Open with Erin Routliffe and her American partner Asia Muhammad charging into the tournament quarter finals while Michael Venus lost in nail-bitingly close third-set tiebreak.

Routliffe and Muhammad easily won their round of 16 women's doubles match 6-2 6-1 with their aggressive all court game proving too strong for their opponents, Miyu Kato (Japan) and Zhaoxuan Yang (China). The win sets them up for a quarter-final clash tomorrow against the tournament top seeds Jasmine Paolini and Sara Errani of Italy.

Speaking from Miami after today's match Routliffe says she and Muhammad served well winning a high percentage of points off their first serves and continued to play aggressively throughout the match.

"We made a lot of returns and continued to put pressure on them throughout," she says.

Routliffe and Muhammad set the tone of the match from the outset, breaking their opponents' serves in the third and seventh games of the first set. They then held serve comfortably to take the first set 6-2 in 32 minutes.

They broke the Kato and Yang serve in the first game of the second set, romping through the set to break again in the fifth game for a 4-1 lead. They then held their own service to love before breaking again in the seventh game on their second match point to take the set 6-1 in just 29 minutes.

Routliffe is looking forward to tomorrow's quarter-final which she says will be "a good challenge".

Both Routliffe and Muhammad have played the Italian pair two or three times before but with other partners. "We are playing well together and it will be a good match," she says.

In another match at the Miami Open  today New Zealand's top men's doubles player Michael Venus came ever so close to a win after making a welcome return to tournament play following seven months off the tour post elbow surgery.

Venus and his partner Yuki Bhambri of India lost in a nail-biting third set tiebreak to Sander Arends of the Netherlands and John-Patrick Smith of Australian 6-4 5-7 13-15.

It was a match that could have gone either way. Venus and Bhambri, who teamed up last year for their US Open semi-final run, won the first set 6-4 after breaking in the third game and racing out to a 5-2 lead. They were then broken, with their opponents then holding serve. They served for the set, winning it in 39 minutes.

The second set was close, going with service until the twelfth game when Arends and Smith scored a vital break to take the set 7-5.

The deciding super-tiebreak was equally tight throughout although Venus and Bhambri at one stage led 8-6 before their opponents got it back to 9-all. Points were traded until Arends and Smith again scored a vital break at 13-all and took the match 15-13 in a heart-breaker for the Kiwi and his partner.