The doubles at the Australian Open has the eighth round on the schedule. Who will the representatives of Czech tennis meet?

On Monday, in addition to the remaining singles eight-final matches, the doubles matches will also be played at the Australian Open. Among the top sixteen women’s doubles pairs there are also two Czechs. Thanks to singles quarter-finalist Jiri Lehecek, the Czech tennis is also represented in the men’s doubles. So what matches can we look forward to?

Barbora Krejčíková and Katerina Siniakova are the big favourites for the overall triumph. In the previous round they defeated the Czech-American duo Linda Fruhvirtová, Alison Riskeová-Armitrajová in two sets, twice 6::2.

The tennis players, who have already played their singles matches at this year’s first Grand Slam tournament, will next play an unseeded pair. They are Georgia’s Oxana Kalashnikova and American Alycia Parks.

Miriam Kolodziejová and Markéta Vondrousová have a tough match under their belts, having managed a big turnaround against the tournament’s number seven seeds Beatriz Haddad Maia and Zhang Shuai. The Brazilian and the Chinese dominated the opening set 6:3 and had three match points in the tiebreak of the second set. In the end, however, the Czechs won 11:9 in the shortened game.

In the deciding set Kolodziejová and Vondroušová faced another critical situation. At 0::5 they had to turn away four more match points, which they managed to do. They took the set to a tiebreak again, in which they survived the eighth and ninth match points of their opponents.

The Czech tennis players then dominated the dramatic ending with a score of 14:12 and can look forward to the eighth round. There they will face Marta Kostyukova from Ukraine and Elena Gabriela Ruse from Romania.

The Czech-Slovak men’s duo Jiri Lehečka, Alex Molčan will also play in the semi-finals on Monday morning. They defeated the Austrians Alexander Erler and Lucas Miedler twice 7:5 on Saturday.

Their next opponents will be Frenchmen Jeremy Chardy and Fabrice Martin. Live coverage of the Melbourne event, one of the “Big Four tournaments”, will be broadcast by Eurosport.

Source: Australian Open