The men’s and women’s doubles draws have been released at the Australian Open, with pride of place amongst the New Zealanders going to Erin Routliffe. She and Gaby Dabrowski are the fourth seeds after their exploits in the latter part of last year, and their first opponents will be Nadia Podoroska from Argentina and Mayar Sherif from Egypt. It will be quite a noisy match, as Sherif is one of the louder grunters on tour. Michael Venus and Jamie Murray are the ninth seeds in the men’s competition, where they will face Ariel Behar from Uruguay and Adam Pavlasek from the Czech Republic in the first round.
Marcus Daniell has reunited with former long-term partner Marcelo Demoliner from Brazil, and they start against the Australian wild card pair of John Millman, in his last professional tournament, and Eddie Winter, who was Jack Loutit’s partner in their run to the quarter-finals at junior Wimbledon in 2022. The winners will most likely play second seeds Rohan Bopanna and Matthew Ebden in the second round.
Ben McLachlan is playing with Yoshihito Nishioka in an all-Japanese combination. I assume they’re on a track towards the Olympic Games in Paris if they can get their rankings high enough. They have a tricky opening match against Nikola Cacic from Serbia and Denys Molchanov from Ukraine, with the winners likely to face top seeds Ivan Dodig and Austin Krajicek in the second round.