MELBOURNE – It was the end of the road for South Africa's Raven Klaasen and New Zealand partner Michael Venus on Tuesday when they were knocked out of the Australian Open men's doubles in the quarterfinals.
The duo reached the quarter-finals of the first grand slam of the year after beating Denmark’s Frederick Nielsen and Marcelo Demoliner in just 62 minutes.
The sixth-seeds were hoping to reach the semifinals but were beaten 6-4 7-6(6) by Leonardo Mayer (Argentina) and Joao Sousa (Portugal) who were unseeded.
Venus and Klaasen were off to the worst possible start with their opponents breaking serve in the opening game though they started to improve and winning games but still lost the first set 6-4.
In the second set, it was far more encouraging from Venus and Klaasen with the SA/Kiwi combination taking Mayer and Sousa to a tiebreak which ended 8-6 in favour of the latter at Melbourne Park.