South Africa's Raven Klaasen, left, and New Zealand's Michael Venus touch hands during their men's doubles final match against Mike Bryan and Jack Sock. Photo / AP.
South Africa's Raven Klaasen, left, and New Zealand's Michael Venus touch hands during their men's doubles final match against Mike Bryan and Jack Sock. Photo / AP.
In form doubles pair Kiwi Michael Venus and South African partner Raven Klaasen have cruised into the second round at the ATP Masters 1000 tournament in Cincinnati.
They've thrashed French pair Richard Gasquet and Adrian Mannarino in straight sets 6-1 6-2 in just 50 minutes.
Venus and Klaasen are comingoff a finals appearance in the Masters 1000 tournament in Toronto on Monday after last month finishing runners up at Wimbledon.
They dominated from the outset converting three break points to cruise through the first set in 22 minutes.
Games went with serve until the fifth game of the second set when Gasquet was broken. After Venus held serve for 4-2 he made a backhand volley in the next game to break Mannarino and Klaasen served out the match.
The pair are fifth in the race to qualify for the ATP World Tour finals in London with Venus up to 18 in the individual doubles rankings and Klaasen 21.
The Kiwi does have a lot of points to defend this week however after reaching the semi finals last year in Cincinnati with his then partner Ryan Harrison.
Venus and Klaasen will face 5th seeds Lukasz Kubot and Marcelo Melo in the second round a week after beating them at the same stage last week in Toronto.
