The Styrian Oliver Marach has won the duel with Jan-Lennard-Struff (Warstein) and is in the doubles finals of the Australian Open for the first time. Together with his Croatian partner Mate Pavic, 37-year-old Marach defeated the German-Japanese duo Struff/Ben Mclachlan in 2:26 hours with 4:6,7:5,7:6 (7:4).
The seventh placed Marach/Pavic remain unbeaten this season. The duo has already won the Doha and Auckland tournaments in 2018,”I’d love it if we could make the triple. The Australian Open are my favourite slam, I’ve been to the semi-finals here before,”said Marach, saying:” We have the confidence from the first two weeks of the year, which makes a lot of difference on the important points.
In the final, the Graz player will play Pavic against either the twins Bob Bryan/Mike Bryan (USA/No. 6) or the Colombians Juan Sebastian Cabal/Robert Farah (No. 11).
Struff and New Zealander Mclachlan played together for the first time in Melbourne, beating top seeded Lukas Kubot (Poland) and Marcelo Melo (Brazil) in the quarter-finals. Up to the Australian Open, Struff had never made it through the second double round of a Grand Slam tournament, but in the singles he had failed after his opening victory at the Swiss Roger Federer.
After the end, Struff travels to Brisbane for the Davis Cup. The team headed by Alexander Zverev and captain Michael Kohlmann, who finished fourth in the world rankings, will meet on 2 January. till 4. February to host Australia.