Venus and Puetz bow out of Hamburg semis

A surprise defeat for Michael Venus and his German partner Tim Puetz in the semi-finals of the ATP 500 tournament in Hamburg.

The third seeds and defending champions have lost 6-4 6-4 in one hour and 13 minutes to the unseeded pair of Finland’s Harri Heliovaara and Britain’s Lloyd Glasspool for a place in the final.

Games went with serve until the 8^th game of the first set when Puetz was broken leaving Glasspool serving for the set at 5-3. But he too was broken. Back on serve Venus had a chance to level the scores but he too was broken and the first set was over in 33 minutes.

There were no breaks of serve in the second set until the 10^th game where Puetz was serving to stay in the match, But Glasspool and Heliovaara were able to get the break to clinch a straight sets win.

Venus and Puetz now head to another clay court tournament, the ATP 250 event in Kitzbuhel in Austria where they are the top seeds and will face the Austrian pair of Lukas Neumayer and Sebastian Ohner in the first round.

Venus and Puetz are projected to remain at 11 and 12 respectively in the ATP doubles rankings and they are 7thin the race to join the elite eight team field at November’s ATP Tour finals in Turin.