Top seeds and defending men’s doubles champions Bob and Mike Bryan blasted their way past the British pairing of Richard Bloomfield and Jonathan Marray in straight sets to reach the quarter-finals. The 29-year-old twins 6-2, 6-2, 7-6 (7-4) victory was never really in doubt, with the Americans making light work of this three-set encounter.
The match began with Bloomfield holding serve comfortably, including firing down a powerful ace. The left-handed 6ft 4ins Bob Bryan leveled at 1-1, and then the first opening came with the Bryans converting the first of two breakpoints on the Marray serve.
The right handed 6ft 3ins Mike Bryan comfortably held his opening service game to love and this was followed up with a break against the Bloomfield serve for the Americans to take a 4-1 lead. Mike served out the first set with a thundering ace and the Britons found themselves 6-2 down within 19 minutes.
The second set was as equally one-sided, with the identically dressed brothers frequently putting pressure on the Britons with their energetic teamwork and excellent returns. Marray was broken in both his service games, and the Bryans soon found themselves winning the second set 6-2 after 39 minutes of play.
The third set proved to be a lot tighter and the Britons worked their way back into the match, finding some much-needed rhythm on their serves. Bloomfield served two love games and Marray one. The homegrown pair appeared to be growing in confidence, applying a bit of pressure of their own on their opponents and hitting some winning volleys to take the third set into a tiebreak.
The first point of the tiebreak was the most entertaining of the match with the Bryans defending three overhead smashes in a row before Marray won the point with a delicate well-taken volley. Marray followed this up with a superb winner down the line off Bob’s serve to claim the first mini-break and lead 2-0. But the Bryans immediately won a point back on the Marray serve to level the tie-breaker at 4-4.
The crucial break point went the top seeds’ way when Bloomfield served a double-fault to trail 4-5. Bob took full advantage, holding both his serves to clinch the tie-break 7-4 and seal the match in 1 hour and 13 minutes just as the rain began to fall.
Afterwards Marray said: "It was tough, we didn’t play as well as we can, but they put a lot of pressure on and it took us some time to get used to playing at that level. We played pretty well in the third, but they were very good. It's been a great week, though, and a good boost to our doubles rankings.”
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