© Mike Lawrence/ATP Tour
Filip Polasek and Ivan Dodig beat Oliver Marach and Luke Saville to reach the Miami semi-finals.
Fourth seeds save five of the six break points they face
Ivan Dodig and Filip Polasek got off to a hot start to their 2021 season, and it’s only getting better in Miami.
The fourth seeds eliminated Oliver Marach and Luke Saville 7-6(4), 6-4 after one hour and 48 minutes on Tuesday to reach the semi-finals of the Miami Open presented by Itau. The Croatian-Slovakian duo will play Marcelo Arevalo and Horia Tecau or Daniel Evans and Neal Skupski for a spot in the championship match at this ATP Masters 1000 event.
Dodig and Polasek competed well under pressure against Marach and Saville, saving five of the six break points they faced while converting two of their nine opportunities. The winners claimed 43 per cent of their first-serve return points en route to their victory.
The duo, which got together in 2019, won this year’s Australian Open and made the Dubai semi-finals. Their first big breakthrough as a team came two years ago, when Dodig and Polasek triumphed at the Western & Southern Open. They have claimed three tour-level trophies together and qualified for the 2019 Nitto ATP Finals.