Kiwi doubles team narrow win at ASB Classic
- editor59343
- 8 minutes ago
- 2 min read
The New Zealand doubles team of Finn Reynolds and James Watt have scored a big win in their careers to reach the quarter-finals of the ASB Classic in Auckland.
The victory is the first for both at ATP Tour main tournament level and will like push them up the rankings a little further into the 80's
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The local duo beat Belgium's Sander Gille and Sem Verbeek of the Netherlands in a super tiebreak 6-4 6-7(2) 13-11 on centre court.
Down 2-6 in the tiebreakk, the New Zealanders stormed back into the match and secured the win in front of a big and enthusiastic crowd.
In the super tiebreak Gille and Verbeek held the advantage and looked set to take the win.
Watt and Reynolds were forced to save two match points with Watt serving at 6-9, before the contest tightened again, as Watt hit an incredible winning return on the next match point.
The pair said they never doubted they could get a result.
"You always think it's not over until it's over you've got to play every single point as hard as you can," Watt said.
Reynolds echoed the comment.
"You're definitely aware that you're not in the greatest position but you always believe you can win. Talk to any player here they've all had crazy comebacks or losses going the other way around so you're never out of it, especially in doubles."
They had drawn on the crowd's energy to get them into the next round.
"We're on a big high right now, the crowd and the atmosphere really got us pumped up at the end there," Watt said of the post-match emotions.
"We were trying to get some energy going in the first tiebreak and it just felt like we were a little bit flat and even in the super [tiebreak] it was sort of like that too and we just eventually got things going and then we just needed one or two shots to get ourselves really pumped up and the crowd pumped up because it was getting a little quiet."
Reynolds and Watt will play the winner of match between the third seeds from France, Sadio Doumbia and Fabien Reboul, and Austria's Alexander Erler and Robert Galloway of the United States who play on Wednesday afternoon.