21 Jun 2018

Daniell too good for Djokovic and Wawrinka

8:55 am on 21 June 2018

The New Zealand doubles player Marcus Daniell has taken a couple of major scalps at the Queens Club tennis tournament in London beating multiple Grand Slam champions Novak Djokovic and Stan Wawrinka in the first round of doubles.

Stan Wawrinka and Novak Djokovic will play New Zealand's Marcus Daniell and and his Dutch doubles partner Wesley Koolhof.

Stan Wawrinka and Novak Djokovic will play New Zealand's Marcus Daniell and Photo: Photosport

Daniell and his Dutch partner Wesley Koolhof who gained a lucky losers entry to the main draw beat Djokovic and Wawrinka in straight sets 6-4, 7-6.

Djokovic and Wawrinka, who have won 15 grand slam singles titles between them, were playing doubles to get match play ahead of Wimbledon.

Daniell and Koolhof will play 4th seeds Jamie Murray of Britain and Brazilian Bruno Soares in the second round.

'Often the case playing against top singles players, they don't understand the tactics of doubles how the positioning yourself on the court can create pressure. When you play doubles every week and you focus on it and you are looking at the strategy and tactics you get a bit of insight that the singles players don't seem to get." Daniell said.

"Today they were obviously hitting big from the baseline and serving well and returning well but the way that we positioned ourselves at the net and the cleaning out we did around the net made the difference. We took the net away from them early in the match and they didn't really know what to do about it."

Meanwhile New Zealand's top ranked doubles player Michael Venus and his South African partner Raven Klaasen have suffered a shock first round defeat the ATP tournament in Halle in Germany.

Resuming their rain interrupted match at 4-5 in the first set, the German wildcard pairing of Tim Puetz and Jan-Lennard Struff duly served out the first set 6-4 and won the second in a tie breaker 7-6 (4)

-RNZ