The highs and lows of pro tennis have featured recently for New Zealand doubles player Michael Venus.
He reached the quarterfinals with Croatian Nikola Mektic in Brisbane in week one of the year, then won the title at Auckland, but found themselves defeated in the first round of the Australian Open.
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The match started badly for the Kiwi and Croatian pair as Mektic got broken in the opening game.
However the fifth seeds were able to come back into the set and win the serve of Borges to level the score at 4-4 and go ahead 6-5 before the the Portuguese forced the tiebreak and raced away with the set.
The second set was tight initially, but serving at 3-4 Mektic was broken again and Borges then served out the match to love..
“No matter who you play, it's going to be a few points here or there and if you can take the momentum when you get it and kind of roll with it, you'll probably do a little bit better,” said Venus after the match.
"Unfortunately, it was not an ideal start, but these things are going to happen throughout the year, and it's about how you rebound and come back from them.
“We did a good job getting back in the set and really turned that momentum around.
“We were 6-5, 0-30 there and had a look at a couple of those points that the majority of the time, maybe we take one of those and then we're looking at set point.
“You do that, and things can swing quite quickly in the other direction.”
Thirty-seven-year-old Venus will now combine with fellow Kiwi Erin Routliffe in the mixed doubles.