Doubles Take: Bryans survive, Chans set for battle

The rest of the men's and women's teams vie for quarterfinal spots at the Australian Open. Doubles Take gives you your daily preview.

If you’re a team facing Bob and Mike Bryan at this year’s Australian Open, perhaps your best bet is to let them win the first set because if you don’t, they’re bound to snatch victory right out of your hands.

For the third match in a row, the Bryan brothers rallied after dropping the first set, with Jeremy Chardy and Fabrice Martin being the latest team they’ve turned the tables on.

Next up for the six-time Australian Open champs are the veterans Marcin Matkowski and Aisam-Ul-Haq Quereshi. The 15th seeds will do well to remember to keep the pressure up from the first point to the last as you can never count the Bryans out.

Here are three matches to keep an eye on, with one of them involving another set of siblings.

(1) Chan Yung-Jan/Andrea Hlavackova vs. (14 ) Chan Hao-Ching /Katarina Srebotnik:

This third-round battle involves the sisters Chan facing off. The former doubles partners have been two of the best players on tour the past few years—and their Grand Slam-winning teammates aren’t too bad themselves. As the top seeds still get used to each other with this being their first year playing together, the younger Chan’s knowledge of her sibling’s game could make the difference.

(4) Kveta Peschke/Henri Kontinen vs. Abigail Spears/Juan Sebastian Cabal:

It’s one of the biggest quirks of mixed doubles: You can come to a tournament as the defending champion and still end up on the outs as far as seeding goes if higher-ranked players decide to team up. That’s where Spears and Cabal find themselves as they face the fourth seeds, who’ve had mixed-doubles success, but not with each other. Last year’s winners have a good shot here at knocking off Peschke and Kontinen.

(7) Oliver Marach/Mate Pavic vs. (10) Rohan Bopanna/Edouard Roger-Vasselin:

Marach and Pavic are two of the last players left in the tournament who don’t know what it’s like to have a loss in 2018. Will the ride continue? They face a solid pairing in Bopanna and Roger-Vasselin, both of whom have a strong pedigree of performing well in the later stages of a major. It’s a test for both duos, but Marach and Pavic have faced all types of teams during their winning streak and come through. It could be a battle, but they should come through.

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