Jamie Murray and Bruno Soares remained on course for a return to the doubles final of the US Open on day 10 with a grinding win over the large but nimble Australian Chris Guccione and his partner, André Sá.
The British-Brazilian team prevailed in their quarter-final 7-6, 2-6, 6-3 in two hours and 23 minutes on a warm but not oppressive day on one of the outside show courts, taking the tie-break 11-9.
Guccione is an interesting player. In a three-set qualifier for Wimbledon 10 years ago he struck 50 aces but doubles is where he shines. He and Lleyton Hewitt beat Roger Federer and Stan Wawrinka in a Davis Cup match in 2011 and he partnered Carsten Ball (son of Syd), another US-based Australian, to reach this stage here in 2009, losing to the Bryan brothers.
So Murray and Soares had plenty to beat. Guccione’s bulk – 6ft 7in and just over 14 stones, according to the official statistics, but looking bigger to the naked eye – belied a twinkle-toed operator at the net and a neat volley took him and Sá to deuce in the fourth game, but they could not seal the break on Soares’s serve.
Each team had plenty of chances in the first half-hour, but they remained locked at four-all. Not even a remarkable Murray around-the-post winner in the ninth game that stretched Guccione could budge the stasis.
Sa, the 39-year-old veteran from Brazil who played with Thomaz Bellucci at the Rio Olympics and put the Murray brothers out in the first round, had the ball in hand at five-all, and held comfortably to shift the pressure across the net.
Murray, briefly No1 in the world last year, and Soares have gone off the boil a little after a stunning run, but, seeded fourth, they had a great chance against the Australian/Brazilian outsiders to reach the semi-finals.
The responsibility landed on Soares’s racket, and he was staring at the second of two set points when he forced Sá to hit wide on a big second serve for deuce, and they escaped. They went 3-0 down in the tie-break, and fought back to earn three break points but blew them. As did the unfortunate Sá on set point, off-balance as his volley ballooned the net. “It was a battle, the first set was probably the longest I’ve ever played. Bruno served out amazing at the end,” Murray said of the 65 minute-long set.
The second could not have been more different. Guccione and Sá raced to a 4-1 lead and threatened to steamroller their opponents. At 1-5 it seemed possible that Murray would be finished on court 17 in time to dash over to Arthur Ashe, where his brother, Andy, was due to go in the early-afternoon quarter-final against Kei Nishikori – but they managed to stretch it out and regain some control.
Murray took a break on the changeover to ease a back strain on what looked like a medical skateboard. When they resumed, Sá slid an unreachable, angled volley past him into empty space and they went to a decider, where the seedings were finally given credence.
Again the crucial serving gig fell to Soares at 5-3 and, with Murray cat-like at the net, they wrapped up their place in the semi-finals to love. They will play the French champions who beat them last year, Pierre-Hugues Herbert and Nicolas Mahut, who defeated Aisam-Ul-Haq Qureshi and Robert Lindstedt 6-3, 7-6 (7-4).
