Venus, Murray win in the dark at Wimbledon

Michael Venus and Jamie Murray have won their first round match at Wimbledon, defeating Albano Olivetti from France and Spain’s David Vega Hernandez 6-4 3-6 6-4.

The match was played on court No 12, the fifth biggest court at Wimbledon and started at 7.34pm, with shadows steadily growing longer on the now slightly worn grass court and it didn’t finish until after 9pm.

It was a tight contest, as the scoreline suggests, with the match coming down to a few key moments.

The first of those came in the fifth game of the opening set, when at 0-30, Olivetti served back to back double faults to give Venus and Murray the break.

Venus then held serve in the next game for a 4-2 lead and he went on to finish off the set with an ace a short time later.

In the sixth game of the second set Venus was broken to love, having served superbly up until that point.

In the next game, on Vega Hernandez’s serve, he had to defend a break point, which he did, putting him and Olivetti up 5-2 and they went on to take the set.

Tension built over the third set as neither team was able to break serve and Venus got a solid hold to take the score to 5-4. 

With Olivetti serving the next game, he fell behind 15-40 and on the next point he put a backhand volley too long, to give Venus and Murray the victory.

After tight first round losses in their two warm up matches for Wimbledon at grass court tournaments, Venus said it was pleasing to come out on the right side of the result this time.

“It’s good that we won, that’s the main thing. We’ve spent a lot of time on the grass practising,” he said.

“We’ve had a couple of close losses, so it’s good to have won that. We started well and I had a bit of a dip in concentration for two games and that cost us the second set. 

“I’m happy to have been able to bounce back from that and we played a good third set and managed to sneak out that last break, before it got too dark.”

After tight first round losses in their two warm up matches for Wimbledon at grass court tournaments, Venus said it was pleasing to come out on the right side of the result this time.

“It’s good that we won, that’s the main thing. We’ve spent a lot of time on the grass practising,” he said.

“We’ve had a couple of close losses, so it’s good to have won that. We started well and I had a bit of a dip in concentration for two games and that cost us the second set. 

“I’m happy to have been able to bounce back from that and we played a good third set and managed to sneak out that last break, before it got too dark.”

In the second round Venus and Murray will play the Austrian pairing of Alexander Erler and Lucas Miedler, with the match to be played on Saturday.