Run ends for Venus at Wimbledon

Michael Venus and Jamie Murray have bowed out of the men’s doubles at Wimbledon, losing 6-4 6-3 to the Germans Tim Puetz and Kevin Krawietz in the quarterfinals.

Venus was broken when serving at 4-5 in the opening set and Murray did likewise in the second game of the next.

That was all that separated two of the best doubles teams in the world and while Puetz and Krawietz move onto the semifinals, Murray and Venus look forward to the North American swing.

When Venus served at 2-5 in the second set, he fell behind 15-40, but saved two match points with a couple of massive serves. However, it just delayed the win as Krawietz served out the next game, losing just one point.

Venus felt the match came down to a 10-minute period, which overlapped the end of the first set and the beginning of the second.

“I thought we played really well for the first set, we gave ourselves plenty of opportunities, we were in a lot of return games and were holding easily,” Venus reflected.

“Then the game we got broken at 5-4, they hit three return winners off first serves and another good return off a first serve.

“They caught fire together at the same time, a bit out of the blue compared to the other games where we were holding easily.

“That changed the momentum and we didn’t really recover well enough.

“In the first game of the second set we were 0-30 and didn’t do any more in that game, then we got broken in the next game.

“The match completely changed in those 10 minutes and we were playing catch up from that point.

“We had a couple of break points to get back on serve, I missed a return just wide and some of those bigger points didn’t fall our way today.

“Sometimes that happens and we’ve got to learn from it and keep trying to improve.”

Now that men’s doubles matches at Wimbledon have been reduced from best-of five, to best-of-three set contests, smaller moments have a bigger impact on results and as the serve is so important on grass, one break is often enough to win a set as it’s so hard to get a break back.

Tactics on grass are so often based around getting the first serve in, or keeping the ball in play when returning.

“Everyone’s got their own tendencies with how they like to do things,” Venus said. 

“You can over think those things. Should we have served here? Should we have done this?

“At the end of the day, if we execute our serve and hit the spot we’re trying to hit and the net guy is in position, then you’re going to win 90% of those points.

“It comes down to executing those things and if you do get a look as a returner, being sharp and making sure you take any openings you can.

“We created enough openings today, but didn’t capitalise them into breaks of serve.”

With the grass court season over, Venus will take a week off before heading across the Atlantic, where he and Murray will play tournaments in Atlanta, Washington DC, Toronto and Cincinnati, before the US Open begins on August 28.