Michael Venus served first when he and Jamie Murray played Hugo Nys and Jan Zielinski in the semi-final of the Swiss Indoor Open in Basel this morning, holding comfortably despite a beautiful inside-out forehand return from Zielinski. Nys was equally at ease in his first turn, but Murray did better than both when holding to love after winning his first point with a beautiful overhead volley. It didn’t start so well for Zielinski, with a fabulous backhand return down the tramlines from Venus taking them to deuce, where Zielinski was forced to hit a forehand wide on the deciding point. Venus then held to love, Zielinski losing a fantastic 12 shot rally with a forehand into the net, before we saw the best service game of the match. Nys aced Murray down the middle to start before forcing Venus into a return error, and then aced both of them to finish the game.
Murray had another easy hold before we saw Nys hit the shot of the match, a fantastic angled backhand volley at the net. Zielinski finished that game with an ace to keep his team in touch, but Venus was still going to be serving for the set. Nys and Venus lost good short rallies before a forehand return into the net from Nys gave away two set points. Venus flubbed the first when he hit a forehand into the net to drop back to deuce, but Murray’s forehand volley that went wide was worse, the Scot dropping to his haunches with his head in his hands, They still had the lead, though, and Venus hit a beautiful backhand return of Nys to take the score to 30-30. Nys responded with a fabulous overhead cross-court backhand volley, but he put a forehand volley into the net at the end of a good short rally. That took them to deuce but, more importantly, it gave a third set point to Venus and Murray – and Nys double faulted. The set had taken 40 minutes.
The second set would be just about unique in not having a standout individual shot, the closest being a nice gentle forehand winner onto the sideline by Nys to open the eighth game. Before then we had seen a handful of good rallies, with a great one in the second game that Venus lost with a forehand volley into the net He also lost the deciding point in that game with a forehand volley that he left short of the net. That might have been on his mind in the next game when Murray lost his serve, the Scot dropping a forehand volley straight into the ground to end the game. Venus then held to love before Nys smashed away the winning volley on the deciding point, and the remaining games all went with serve, the set lasting for 38 minutes.
The first two points in the match tie-break went with serve, but then it all changed. Murray hit a beautiful cross-court backhand return off Zielinski, but lost his own first point when Venus hit a backhand volley over the baseline. He lost his second as well, to a beautiful backhand return from Nys, but broke the latter’s serve with a forehand volley that bounced off Zielinski. Nys won the fantastic rally on his second point when they changed ends, with a cross-court backhand volley that just caught the line,
His smash off Venus gave them the lead again, but he lost Zielinski’s second point when forced to hit a backhand volley wide. Murray and Nys then each won both their points, the last of the four producing a fantastic rally that Zielinski ended with a nice cross-court backhand volley. An overhead backhand volley by Nys off Venus then created three match points, but a poor angled backhand volley from Murray went wide to lose the match. The final score was 4-6, 6-4, 10-7, and they were on court for an hour and 33 minutes.