Routliffe & Venus Win, Watt & Reynolds In

Today was a dream start for the New Zealand contingent at Roland-Garros, with Erin Routliffe and Michael Venus both securing round one victories, while the young New Zealand doubles team of James Watt and Finn Reynolds have been accepted into the main doubles draw. 

Watt, from South Canterbury, and Reynolds, from Hawkes’ Bay, were the fifth alternates on the official draw list, and needed four teams ahead of them to pull out.

With Paris experiencing a heatwave, hopes were high that singles players who were also planning on playing the doubles would pull out to conserve energy, and give the Kiwi players the luck they needed to make their Grand Slam debut.

Watt and Reynolds have drawn unseeded Adam Pavlasek and Patrik Rikl of the Czech Republic, both ranked just within the world’s top 50.

Watt and Reynolds have been in the world’s top 90 for most of this year, after a stellar run at the ATP Challenger level last year, where the pair reached a remarkable nine finals, winning five of them. These titles came in the USA (Tyler, Cary, Tiburon), Canada (Granby), and China (Jinan).

They made the step up to ATP level at the ASB Classic this year, where In their first tour-level match, they defeated world #34 and #49 Gille and Verbeek in front of a passionate home crowd. More victories at ATP level followed in Argentina and Chile during the South American clay-court swing.

Despite having a strong doubles ranking, with singles players being able to use their singles ranking to enter the doubles draw, and with a number of doubles wildcards allocated to lower-ranked local players, getting accepted into Grand Slams was always going to be tight.

However their luck has turned, and with a day’s notice, they’ll both take to the famous red clay, on Court 2 at 9pm New Zealand time tonight.

Sky Sport 4 will be showing the match live, so New Zealanders will be able to watch this significant moment for New Zealand tennis.

Elsewhere, our two established tour professionals Erin Routliffe and Michael Venus are through to their next rounds.

Routliffe, paired with Jelena Ostapenko, are the fifth seeds in the Women's Doubles draw, and they defeated French Wildcards Ksenia Efremova & Eleejah Inisan. While the impressive French teenagers took the opening set, Routliffe/Ostapenko eventually took the match over with a 3-6, 6-1, 6-2 score line.

On the men's side, Michael Venus, and partner Yuki Bhambri defeated Argentine pair Francisco Cerundolo & Mariano Kestelboim, showing their class with a 7-5, 6-2 victory.