Source: Radio New Zealand
New Zealand’s Finn Reynolds and James Watt during their doubles match at the ASB Classic. Andrew Cornaga/www.photosport.nz
New Zealand doubles pairing Finn Reynolds and James Watt have belied their wildcard status to progress to the quarter-finals of the ASB Classic tennis tournament in Auckland.
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 Tuesday on centre court.
Down four points in the tiebreak, the New Zealanders stormed back into the match and secured their first win of the tournament.
The Kiwis 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 backed that up.
“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.
Tuesday’s match was Watt’s second time on court at his home tournament after he lost in his singles match against American Jenson Brooksby on Monday.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
