Venus, Skupski fight back to advance to US Open quarterfinals

Michael Venus and Neal Skupski are into the quarterfinals of the US Open, following their third-round win over the all-American team of Tristan Boyer and Emilio Nava.

Venus and Skupski won 3-6 7-6(3) 6-4 in front of a big crowd on Stadium 17 Court on Monday (Tuesday NZ time) in a match that lasted for two hours and five minutes.

Having made the semifinals of Wimbledon together and won tournaments on grass in Eastbourne and Queens, Venus and Skupski weren’t able to quickly get results when they transferred back onto hard courts for the US swing, although they did reach the quarterfinals in Cincinnati.

But their run at the US Open has shown they’re a world-class combination on all surfaces, even though they had to take the long route to this victory. 

Venus was broken in the second game and that was a lead their opponents were able to hold for the remainder of the set, with Skupski unable to get back a serve from Nava at 40-30 and 5-4.

Neither team managed to get a break in the second set, so it went into a tiebreaker. In it, Venus and Skupski got an early mini-break which they were able to consolidate with good serving and when Nava was serving at 6-3 he double-faulted.

Boyer was broken in the opening game of the deciding set and after that Venus and Skupski kept their consistency levels up to retain that advantage.

They had three match points when Boyer was serving at 3-5, but weren’t able to convert any of them.

Skupski served the next game and held to love, serving an ace on the team’s fourth match point.

Venus and Skupski are the No 8 seeds at the US Open and in the quarterfinals they’ll face the No 4 seeds Mate Pavic from Croatia and Argentina’s Marcelo Arevalo.

This match will be the fifth to be played on Grandstand Court on Tuesday. The third match on it will be Erin Routliffe and Gaby Dabrowski against Chan Hao-Chin and Veronika Kudermetova in the women’s doubles quarterfinals.