Kiwi tennis player Marcus Daniell has gone down in the first round of his final Grand Slam, but he refused to go out without a fight at the US Open.
Daniell competed at Flushing Meadows with Mexican partner Miguel Reyes-Varela overnight as they went down 5-7 6-1 7-6 (10) against Guido Andreozzi of Argentina and Sriram Balaji of India.
Daniell and Reyes-Varela won the first set 7-6, before a disappointing second set, going down 6-1.
Daniell and his partner were broken at 4-4 in the third, but broke back as their opponents served for the match.
The enthralling third set was decided with a tiebreak, with the pair rescuing three match points.
They eventually lost to a volley at the net to lose the tiebreak on their opponent's fourth match point in a match that lasted 2 hours 36 minutes.
The 34-year-old spoke on Breakfast last week and said it’s been a “topsy-turvy” year for him, with it being hard for him to have a different partner every week.
He said he will hang up his racket after the ASB Classic early next year, and that the US Open would be his last Grand Slam.
Daniell has also been donating half of his prize money to charity and is aiming to reach 100,000 USD by the end of the ASB Classic.
He was elected onto the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Athletes Commission earlier this year at the Paris Games. He took home the bronze medal with Michael Venus at the Tokyo Games in men’s doubles.
Venus is the eighth-seed in the men’s doubles at the US Open playing with partner Neal Skupski from the UK. They comfortably won their first round match 6-3, 6-3 against French duo Hugo Gaston and Gregoire Jacq.
Erin Routliffe, who is currently number one in the world for women's doubles, will play tomorrow morning at 3am NZT with Canadian partner Gaby Dabrowski. They enter the first round as number one seeds and are the defending champions from last years US Open.
The US Open is available live and free on TVNZ+
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