Krajicek/Mahut Upset Former Miami Champs On Team Debut | ATP Tour | Tennis

Austin Krajicek and Nicolas Mahut’s crew debut proved a memorable one on Friday night.

The American-French duo upset 2021 champions Nikola Mektic and Mate Pavic 6-3, 6-7(6), 10-7 to succeed in the second spherical of the Miami Open offered by Itau. They rallied from a mini-break down within the Match Tie-break and took benefit of a pricey Pavic double fault.

Krajicek and Mahut will subsequent play Rafael Matos and David Vega Hernandez, who eradicated Jaume Munar and Bernabe Zapata Miralles 6-2, 7-6(3). They are competing collectively this week as a result of Krajicek’s standard associate, Ivan Dodig, is out with an harm.

At January’s Australian Open, Wesley Koolhof and Neal Skupski gained simply 4 video games in quarter-final defeat in opposition to eventual champions Rinky Hijikata and Jason Kubler.

On Friday in Miami, the joint-No. 1s within the Pepperstone ATP Doubles Rankings had their revenge. Koolhof and Skpuski raced to a 6-1, 6-2 victory in opposition to their Australian rivals to succeed in the second spherical.

The prime seeds transformed six of 9 break factors in a dominant 64-minute show to kick-start their bid for a fourth ATP Masters 1000 crown. Koolhof and Skupski opened an finally unassailable 4-0 leads in each units of their win, bouncing again from the frustration of their tchampionship-match defeat in Indian Wells six days in the past.

Koolhof and Skupski additionally suffered championship match disappointment in Miami a yr in the past, after they fell to Hubert Hurkacz and John Isner. The Dutch-British pair will proceed its bid to banish these reminiscences at Hard Rock Stadium this yr with a second-round conflict in opposition to Mackenzie McDonald and Botic van de Zandschulp or Marcelo Demoliner and Christopher Eubanks.

All-Dutch pairing Robin Haase and Matwe Middelkoop additionally cruised into the second spherical on Friday. The five-time tour-level titlists dispatched Sebastian Baez and Tomas Martin Etcheverry 6-3, 6-3 to assert their first Miami win as a crew on the second try.