Nicolas Mahut and Fabrice Martin enjoy a first-round win Monday in Winston-Salem.
Skupski Brothers oust Behar/Escobar
Frenchmen Nicolas Mahut and Fabrice Martin are pairing this week for just the second time, but it did not take long for them to get up to speed.
The second seeds defeated Tomislav Brkic of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Nikola Cacic of Serbia 6-4, 6-1 in 51 minutes on Monday to reach the second round of the Winston-Salem Open.
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Brkic and Cacic lifted the Buenos Aires trophy earlier this year, but they found little to trouble the Frenchmen. Mahut and Martin, who first competed together in Hamburg last year, earned four service breaks to advance in North Carolina.
They will next play Austrians Oliver Marach and Philipp Oswald, who ousted Belgians Sander Gille and Joran Vliegen 7-6(4), 5-7, 10-4. In other action, British brothers Ken Skupski and Neal Skupski battled past Uruguay’s Ariel Behar and Ecuador’s Gonzalo Escobar 4-6, 7-6(5), 10-5.