Dubai Tennis C'ships: Yuki and Haase upset third seed to enter semis

Yuki Bhambri and Robin Haase upset the third-seeded British-New Zealand pairing of Jamie Murray and Michael Venus to enter the semis of the Dubai Tennis Championships on Thursday.

The Indo-Dutch pair continued their momentum at the ATP 500 event to clinch a straight set (6-4, 7-6(1)) victory in the quarterfinal against Jamie/Venus who is ranked in 16th and 17th position respectively in the ATP Doubles ranking.

The first set proved to be a hard one for Yuki and Haase as they survived nine breakpoints in the set to make it a perfect serving set while Yuki broke the serve of former world no.1 Jamie Murray on his first serve of the match to take the set.

The second set was much closer as both the pairs were serving very efficiently and eight of the twelve games ended with a perfect 40-0 game. The set then goes into a tiebreaker after the score tied at 6-6.

Yuki showed excellent cross-drive returning skills in the tiebreaker to win three mini-breaks and took it very comfortably (7-1) to take the second set and book a place in the semis.

They will face the second-seeded Croatian-American pair of Ivan Dodig and Austin Krajicek tomorrow to book a place in the final of this prestigious event.

Meanwhile, the world no.1 pairing of Rohan Bopanna and Matthew Ebden suffered a quarterfinal exit after losing a close three-setter (6-3, 3-6, 8-10) match against a Greek-Czech pair of Ariel Behar and Adam Pavlasek.