Venus and Daniell to play for Bronze in Tokyo

Michael Venus and Marcus Daniell will play for bronze in the men’s doubles at the Tokyo Olympics after being outplayed by Croatians Marin Cilic and Ivan Dodig in the semi-finals.

Daniell and Venus have lost 6-2 6-2 in 1 hour 15. Games went with serve until the 5^th game when Venus was put under all sorts of pressure by the Croatians and eventually cracked on a fourth break point. The returning of Cilic and Dodig was simply two good for the Kiwis who had no answers to their power and accuracy. After a 35 minute first set Daniell and Venus needed a strong start to the second but they were broken immediately and were never really in the hunt. Cilic the 2014 US Open singles champion served superbly and while Daniell and Venus managed to create two break point chances in the second set, they were unable to convert, and it is the Croatians who advance to the gold medal match.

Daniell told Sky TV the Croatians were too good on the day. " They played an incredible match today and we didn't execute as well as we could have, but every small opportunity they had, the jumped on." Daniell said.

"It took us until midway through the second set to realise we had to drastically change the way we played and almost try to junk them. From then on it was a closer match but the damage was done."

Daniell told SKY " We are incredibly disappointed, we wanted to go all the way and it's a very different feeling to yesterday. But in saying that we're still here and not done yet, we've got another match tomorrow and we're going to try and bring some metal back."

The bronze medal match will be against American’s Austin Krajicek and Tennys Sandgren who have been beaten by the top seeded Croatian pair of Nikola Mektic and Mate Pavic 6-4 6-4 in the second semi-final.