Oliver Marach and Mate Pavic reached their ninth tour-level final of the season on Saturday, overcoming Ivan Dodig and Nikola Mektic 7-6(6), 6-2 to move into the championship match of the China Open.

The ATP Doubles Race To London frontrunners saved one set point, at 5/6 in the opening set tie-break, before racing away with the second set to advance after 80 minutes. Marach and Pavic won 87 per cent of first-serve points and saved the only break point they faced en route to victory.

Marach and Pavic, who captured three titles in January to open their 2018 campaign, are searching for their first trophy since winning the Banque Eric Sturdza Geneva Open in May. Since then, the top-seeded pairing have lost both finals they have contested, at Roland Garros (l. to Herbert/Mahut) and the German Tennis Championships presented by Kampmann (l. to Peralta/Zeballos).

In Sunday’s final, Marach and Pavic will meet second seeds Lukasz Kubot and Marcelo Melo for the trophy. The Polish-Brazilian duo overcame Colombians Juan Sebastian Cabal and Robert Farah 6-4, 1-6, 10-6. Kubot and Melo saved four of six break points to reach their first final in the Chinese capital, two years after falling in the semi-finals to Jack Sock and Bernard Tomic.

It is not every day that you see a 34-point Match Tie-break on the ATP World Tour. But on Saturday evening, No. 3 seeds Raven Klaasen and Michael Venus outlasted Joe Salisbury and Yasutaka Uchiyama 4-6, 7-6(2), 18-16, saving six match points in a thriller to reach the Rakuten Japan Open Tennis Championships 2018 final.

Is there even a way to describe what it feels like to save that many match points in front of a plethora of excited fans on Arena 1 in Tokyo?

“No, not really,” Venus said, smiling. “I think both our heart rates were racing like none other there throughout that, so we just tried to keep each other calm and focus on what we were trying to do and take it one point at a time.”

Salisbury and Uchiyama did not trail through the first 18 points of the Match Tie-break. And it looked like it might come to an end when Klaasen double faulted at 11/11. But Uchiyama gave that advantage right back. And eventually, after one hour and 51 minutes, Klaasen and Venus reached their fifth final of the season (1-3) in their first year as a team.

“I’ve never been part of a tie-break like that. It’s hard to sit and think that we got that far without someone taking a match point,” Klaasen said. “I hit a double fault and then he hit one right back to me and I was like, ‘Oh, man!’ So exciting and nervy and the crowd was feeling it too, so we’re really happy we were able to pull that through.”

Klaasen and Venus will now face defending champion Ben McLachlan (w/ Uchiyama) and his partner, Jan-Lennard Struff. The Japanese-German pair will compete in their first ATP World Tour final as a pair. They reached the semi-finals of the Australian Open and in Miami earlier this year, while McLachlan triumphed last week at the Shenzhen Open with Salisbury.

“It’s going to take a little bit of time to calm down, but we have to regroup and make sure we don’t get too lost in this win today,” Klaasen said. “There’s a job to do tomorrow.”

Roger Federer and Juan Martin del Potro have been drawn in the same half of the Rolex Shanghai Masters, raising the prospect of a rematch of their gripping semi-final battle one year ago at the Qizhong Tennis Centre.

Federer last year rallied from a set down to beat the Argentine in the semis before taking out Rafael Nadal in the final to claim his 27th ATP World Tour Masters 1000 title.

View Singles Draw

The Federer-Del Potro rivalry has been overshadowed over the years by the triangular battles between Federer, Nadal and Novak Djokovic. But their 25-match FedEx ATP Head2Head series – which Federer leads 18-7 – has produced some epic contests.

In 12 meetings since 2012 Roland Garros, 10 have gone the distance and only one has been decided in straight sets. Federer backed up his Shanghai semi-final win last year with a three-set win over the Tower of Tandil just weeks later in the Basel final. But Delpo took out Federer 7-6 in the third in the BNP Paribas Open final in March this year in their most recent meeting.

Federer and Del Potro, along with Nadal and Djokovic, are the players to have so far qualified for the Nitto ATP Finals, to be held in London 11-18 November. Federer is a six-time champion; Del Potro is chasing his first title and will be making his first appearance since 2013.

In Shanghai, two-time tournament champion Federer will begin his title defense against the winner of Russian Daniil Medvedev and China’s Ze Zhang. The Swiss is seeded to meet Canadian Milos Raonic in the third round, Kei Nishikori or Diego Schwartzman in the quarter-finals and Del Potro in the semis.

In his most recent appearance at the Masters 1000 level, Federer lost in the Cincinnati final to Djokovic. He has not played a tour-level match since a shock fourth-round loss to Australian John Millman at the US Open.

Del Potro opens against the winner of Argentine Leonardo Mayer and in-form Frenchman Richard Gasquet before a tough third-round match against one of Nick Kyrgios, a qualifier, Stan Wawrinka, or 13^th seed Borna Coric.

Del Potro is seeded to meet No. 6 seed Dominic Thiem in the quarter-finals.

Photos courtesy Rolex Shanghai Masters

In the bottom half of the draw, second seed Novak Djokovic will put his 13-match winning streak on the line in his opener against the winner of German Maximilian Marterer and French veteran Jeremy Chardy. He could get his chance to avenge his shock Roland Garros quarter-final loss to Italian Marco Cecchinato in the third round. He is seeded to meet his vanquished Wimbledon final opponent Kevin Anderson in the quarter-finals.

Djokovic owns a tournament-record three titles in Shanghai, winning crowns in 2012-13 and in 2015, when he dropped just 25 games en route to the title, beating Jo-Wilfried Tsonga 6-2, 6-4 in the final.

Djokovic is returning to tour-level play for the first time since winning his 14^th major at the US Open. Earlier in the US summer the Serb became the first man to win a ninth different Masters 1000 singles title at Cincinnati to complete the Career Golden Masters.

Three-time Masters 1000 champion Alexander Zverev, who is next in line to qualify for the Nitto ATP Finals, will open against the winner of Canadian Denis Shapovalov and Georgian Nikoloz Basilashvili, who find themselves in respective semi-finals in Tokyo and Beijing Saturday. Fifth seed Marin Cilic may await in the quarter-finals.

Play begins Sunday.

Did You Know?
Nikolay Davydenko won the inaugural Rolex Shanghai Masters in 2009 and later that year won the Nitto ATP Finals in London.

When Kei Nishikori made his ATP World Tour debut in April 2007, there were zero Japanese players in the Top 200 of the ATP Rankings. Only one player – Shuzo Matsuoka – had ever won a title on the ATP World Tour (1992 Seoul).

When Matsuoka retired from professional tennis in 1998, he immediately turned his attention to the future of the sport. “The moment I retired, I set up tennis camps for children aged 10-18 with the objective of helping young Asians to attain a Top 100 ranking,” he told ATPWorldTour.com in 2008. 

Today, there are seven Japanese players in the Top 200:

Additionally, over the past year-and-a-half, three Japanese players have joined Matsuoka and Kei Nishikori in the winners’ circle on the ATP World Tour. 

Kei Nishikori 錦織 圭
Age 28, Career-High No. 4 (March 2015), 11 titles

As a child, Nishikori attended tennis camps led by Matsuoka and set a goal of breaking his countryman’s career-high ranking of No. 46. Nishikori left Shimane at the age of 13 to train at Nick Bollettieri’s academy in Florida, and a mere five years later in Delray Beach, became the youngest ATP titlist since Lleyton Hewitt. “I can see he is a better player than I ever was, already,” said Matsuoka in 2008.

Nishikori matched Matsuoka’s mark in August 2011, but it wasn’t until his semi-final run at the Rolex Shanghai Masters later that year that he achieved ‘Project 45’ as he rose to No. 30. He continued to lead the way for Japan – and Asia – in the ensuing years, winning an additional 10 titles, reaching a career-high World No. 4, contesting a Grand Slam final, thrice qualifying for the Nitto ATP Finals, finishing a season as the highest-ranked Asian in ATP World Tour history and more.

“I’m happy to hear all the new record or whatever, but my goal is not to make new records in Asia, it’s to be one of the best players in the world,” said Nishikori in 2015. “There’s more things to do, but I am having fun on this journey.”

This season, Nishikori saw his ranking fall to as low as World No. 39 – his lowest placement since October 2011 – after starting the year on the comeback trail, but he returned to Tokyo this week at No. 12 in the ATP Rankings. “I think I’m back at a great level again. I just have to keep 100 per cent every tournament, every match, and just keep being positive, keep my confidence there, and just enjoy playing the matches,” he said.

My First Title: Nishikori Remembers 2008 Delray Beach
(October 2014) The Kei Effect: Nishikori’s Impact On Asian Tennis
(May 2014) From ‘Project 45’ To Top 10
(Nov 2008) Nishikori: Project 45 No Longer A Secret

Taro Daniel ダニエル 太郎
Age 25, Career-High No. 64 (August 2018), 1 Title

Daniel grabbed headlines this past March, when he overcame nerves and a winless record against Top 20 opposition to stun five-time BNP Paribas Open champion Novak Djokovic in front of a packed house on Stadium 1.

While that victory came on hard courts, Daniel’s other milestones have been on clay. In 2014, he made his tour-level debut as a qualifier in Vina del Mar, and proceeded to beat former champion Thomaz Bellucci in the first round. This past May, Daniel claimed his first ATP World Tour title at the TEB BNP Paribas Istanbul Open, beginning his climb towards a career-high No. 64 ATP Ranking by August.

Daniel, who began playing tennis with his father on clay courts in Japan, explained that his international upbringing contributed to his affinity for the surface. “I was born in the U.S., my father is American and has a job that made us travel around the world,” he said. “We had the chance to go to Spain and that was great for me to practise at a higher level. That’s when I got to play more on clay-courts and the reason why I play better on that surface than most of the other Japanese players.”

Daniel Does It! Taro Lifts Maiden Trophy
First-Time Winner Spotlight
Determined Daniel Downs Djokovic

Yoshihito Nishioka 西岡 良仁
Age 23, Career-High No. 58 (March 2017), 1 Title

Nishioka became the newest Japanese champion on the ATP World Tour, when he won seven matches in eight days to triumph at last week’s Shenzhen Open as a qualifier. The 5’8” Mie native, who began playing tennis with his father at the age of four, enjoyed a breakthrough in 2017; Nishioka moved up to a career-high No. 58 in the ATP Rankings in March after qualifying and reaching the fourth round of the BNP Paribas Open. But only a week later, he tore his ACL in the second round of the Miami Open and was sidelined for the remainder of the season.

Nishioka, who saw Yuichi Sugita and Taro Daniel lift trophies during his injury layoff and comeback, shared that their success gave him extra motivation. “If they are doing well, my own mental belief is pumping up and I need to do more. I go harder in training and practice and I want to get a trophy as well. If they are doing well, I want to do more… I think it is really good for Japanese tennis right now.”

Read & Watch: Nishioka Lifts Maiden Trophy In Shenzhen
First-Time Winner Spotlight

Yuichi Sugita 杉田 祐一
Age 30, Career-High No. 36 (October 2017), 1 Title

Last April, Sugita joined an exclusive club that had previously only included Matsuoka and Nishikori. “Before the final, I heard that if I win the tournament, I will be the third Japanese player to win on the ATP World Tour,” he said at the time. “This was amazing. I made my first semi-final here, then the final and the title. I just played my best tennis and I’m really proud of the way I played.”

With his triumph on grass at the inaugural Antalya Open, Sugita broke into the Top 50 – 11 years after he first turned pro, and 21 years after he started playing tennis with mother. He continued his rise by reaching his first ATP World Tour Masters 1000 quarter-final in Cincinnati. From a No. 136 ATP Ranking in February 2017, he climbed 100 spots to No. 36 by October.

Back on his favourite surface this past June, Sugita played what he called “the best match of my career” to upset then-World No. 7 Dominic Thiem. It marked his second Top 10 win this season, including his win over No. 9 Jack Sock at the Australian Open.

Sugita Surges To First ATP World Tour Title
First-Time Winner Spotlight
Sublime Sugita Stuns Thiem In Halle

Jan-Lennard Struff suffered a devastating defeat in singles on Friday, failing to convert match point before ultimately losing to #NextGenATP Canadian Denis Shapovalov. But the German kept his head up on the doubles court later in the day and he was rewarded.

Struff and Ben McLachlan, half of last year’s winning team (w/ Uchiyama) in Tokyo, beat Dutchmen Robin Haase and Matwe Middelkoop 6-1, 6-4 to reach the final of the Rakuten Japan Open Tennis Championships 2018.

“I’m very happy. We played a great match. It was very tough after losing the singles today,” Struff said. “I’m very happy that we played decent and with energy from the beginning, and now really looking forward to the final.”

It is the pair’s fifth tour-level semi-final of the season as a pair, including a trip to the last four at the Australian Open and in Miami. McLachlan and Struff also reached the Wimbledon quarter-finals.

“I’m pretty happy that we got into the final. It’s been a good week so far,” Struff said. “Let’s see what the final brings. It will be a new match and we will give everything to win the title.”

On paper, it appeared the semi-final would be a nail-biter. Haase and Middelkoop have won three ATP World Tour titles in Pune, Sofia and Umag this year. But the winners saved all four break points they faced to come out victorious.

“We played really well. They’re a very tough team,” McLachlan said. “I’ve played Robin a couple of times and played with Matwe before, they’re both tough players, so really happy to get through that in straight sets.”

In the final, McLachlan and Struff will face No. 3 seeds Raven Klaasen and Michael Venus or Joe Salisbury and Yasutaka Uchiyama. Salisbury triumphed with McLachlan in Shenzhen last week and McLachlan partnered Uchiyama to the title in Tokyo last year.

“For me, it doesn’t really matter who we play,” Struff said. “We’ll try to win.”

At the China Open in Beijing, top seeds Oliver Marach and Mate Pavic saved two match points to edge past Marcus Daniell and Wesley Koolhof 5-7, 7-6(4), 14-12 in just under two hours. Marach and Pavic, who have already qualified for the Nitto ATP Finals at London in November, saved match points at 9/10 and 12/11 in the Match tie-break.