As I wrote earlier, the Japan Open in Tokyo is probably unique in that all four teams from the doubles qualifying competition have made it into the main draw. The pair that were supposed to do so, being the ones who actually won the knockout, were Taisei Ichikawa and Masamichi Imamura, and they were up against Ben McLachlan and Yoshihito Nishioka. The match followed a similar pattern to Rubin Statham’s earlier in the night, with hardly any room for individual highlights because the serving was generally so good. McLachlan served first, ahead of the two left-handers, Ichikawa and Nishioka, and all three held comfortably before Imamura had his first turn at the line.
He did hit a beautiful forehand winner down the tramlines to take his second point, but his partner found the net twice with unforced errors, the second giving away a break of serve. McLachlan aced Ichikawa twice out wide in the next game, with the latter then being taken to deuce by a nice backhand volley from McLachlan, but an ace to Nishioka saved the deciding point. Nishioka then held to love, with a successful challenge turning his last fault into an ace, and Imamura hit a beautiful inside-out forehand winner on the way to holding serve again. McLachlan did lose the first set point when Nishioka was forced into an error, but Ichikawa’s inside-out forehand return of the final serve went wide, and that ended the set after 29 minutes.
Ichikawa held to love to start the second set, and this time it was his turn to have a fault turned into an ace when the FoxTenn replay was shown on the screen. McLachlan held to love, but Imamura had the same terrible start in the second set that he had had in the first, although at least this time he was able to get back to deuce from 0-40 before Ichikawa overhit a backhand volley to lose the deciding point. The break was cancelled out three games later when McLachlan and Nishioka hit too many unforced errors, and the next five games saw comfortable holds, leaving Nishioka serving to force a tie-break. He held to love, with McLachlan hitting a fabulous backhand volley to win the second point and what was possibly an even better angled forehand one to wrap up the game.
Imamura lost his first point with a poor forehand over the baseline, but that mini-break was cancelled out by a fabulous forehand winner into the right tramline from Ichikawa. The latter undid his good work when he hit a forehand wide on the very next point. Even though he forced McLachlan into a return error on the next point, the latter still only had to win both his points to end the match. It wasn’t to be, as he double faulted on the first and hit a backhand volley into the net on the second. All of a sudden the qualifiers had a set point, and Nishioka’s cross-court forehand return of Imamura’s serve went wide to end the set after 43 minutes.
The match tie-break started in sensational fashion for the crowd, with Ichikawa hitting a fabulous forehand return down the singles sideline off McLachlan, but Imamura again lost his first point, this time when he hit a forehand into the net. That made the scores level when they changed ends, and that was the situation when they swapped over again, although they had traded mini-breaks from unforced errors. Nishioka hit the shot of the match to win his next point, a wonderful angled backhand volley, and that was followed by the crucial break when Imamura again hit a forehand unforced error to lose his first point. He won his second, but McLachlan was now in the same position that he been in the second set tier-break, needing only to win his two serves to take the match.
Imamura’s inside-out backhand return of the first one went wide, as did Ichikawa’s forehand return of the second, and the match was all over after an hour and 29 minutes. The final score was 6-3, 6-7 (5), 10-7. In Thursday night’s quarter-final McLachlan and Nishioka will play the third seeds, Marcelo Arevalo and Jean-Julien Rojer.