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.

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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.