I wasn’t able to watch Ajeet Rai and Tom Fancutt’s match against Shintaro Imai and Daisuke Sumizawa in Brisbane. There was only one deuce in the entire match, which didn’t come until well into the second set, so it’s not surprising that the first set went to a tie-break. The Japanese pair held to start, but whoever served first out of Rai and Fancutt lost both their points. They did get one mini-break back off the second Japanese server, and retrieved the other when the first Japanese server lost his next point. Parity only lasted two more points, with Rai and Fancutt losing the last of their six serves, and Imai and Sumizawa converted their first set point after 45 minutes.
The second set started in a similar fashion to the first, with comfortable holds through the first five games, but Imai and Sumizawa needed to win a deciding point to hold for 3-3. They got broken in their next game, though, and I’m guessing that it was Rai who served out to love because there were three aces in the four points. The set took 31 minutes.
The match tie-break was just as consistent as the actual games, with the first ten points going to the servers. That changed when Rai and Fancutt lost their second point, but they got the break straight back to be all square as they changed ends for the second time. They broke on the next point as well to go a mini-break in front, and won both their serves to be holding three match points. The Japanese pair saved the first two by winning their own serves, but Rai and Fancutt converted the third when the serve went back to their side of the net. The final score was 6-7 (5), 6-3, 10-8, and the match took an hour and 31 minutes.