By Matt Gallagher
Merseyside tennis star Neal Skupski and partner Wesley Koolhof are through to the second round at the Australian Open.
A convincing 6-1 6-4 straight sets win confirmed their place in the next round of the Men’s Doubles.
The 10th seeds beat Monaco’s Romain Arneodo and France’s Benoit Paire in just under an hour and a half on court 15.
An amazing display featured 25 winners and only four unforced errors to progress.
They will meet unseeded pair Daniel Altmaier and Thiago Monteiro next.
Neal will have to recover quickly, as he has his first-round match to play in the Mixed Doubles with Storm Sanders.
And Skupski’s brother Ken and British partner Dominic Inglot also won their match and are into the next round.
It took the pair an extra 40 minutes to battle pass Tallon Griekspoor from the Netherlands and Andrea Vavassori from Italy.
Helped by five aces, the pair will now face 13th seeds Raven Klaasen and Ben McLachlan.
Only once has Neal Skupski progressed beyond the quarter-finals in a Grand Slam – 2019 US Open semi-final, one better than Ken has.
Round Two in the singles has not been friendly though to the Brits in Australia, so the Skupskis will be hoping to do one better.
Both US Open champion Emma Raducanu and Andy Murray crashed out in their matches under the lights in Melbourne.
Raducanu lost 6-4 4-6 6-3 to Montenegro’s Danka Kovinic and Murray to qualifier Taro Daniel in straight sets 6-4 6-4 6-4.
There was also a loss for Heather Watson to 29th seed Tamara Zidansek.
Dan Evans progressed with a walkover thanks to Arthur Rinderknech of France.
(Featured image by Carine06 under creative commons licence)
