Fourth seeds Wesley Koolhof and Lukasz Kubot overcame Australian wild cards Thanasi Kokkinakis and Nick Kyrgios 6-3, 6-4 in 68 minutes on Sunday for a place in the Australian Open third round.
“We weren’t really expecting anything crazy,” said Kokkinakis. “We just get along really well off the court and we’re good mates so we just wanted to have some fun out there. I think we did that and the guys were just too good, so hats off to them. For me personally, it was a great step back into competitive tennis at the highest level.”
Kyrgios was broken at 3-2 and received treatment for a stiff back at the end of the first set. Koolhof and Kubot broke Kokkinakis’ serve early in the second set and they will next play another local wild card team, Matthew Ebden and John-Patrick Smith, in the third round.
Second-seeded Croatians Nikola Mektic and Mate Pavic extended their winning streak to 11 matches by beating John Millman and Thiago Monteiro 7-6(2), 6-4 in 74 minutes for a place in the quarter-finals.
Mektic and Pavic, who captured titles earlier this year at the Antalya Open (d. Dodig/Polasek) and the Murray River Open (d. Chardy/Martin), will next challenge eighth-seeded Frenchmen Pierre-Hugues Herbert and Nicolas Mahut, who completed the Career Grand Slam by lifting the 2019 Australian Open crown.
Herbert and Mahut hit 17 winners in a 6-4, 6-3 victory over Australian wild cards James Duckworth and Marc Polmans in 74 minutes.
Elsewhere, Marcelo Arevalo and Matwe Middelkoop battled hard to beat Kazakhstanis Alexander Bublik and Andrey Golubev 7-6(4), 6-7(3), 6-3 in two hours and 20 minutes for a place in the quarter-finals. Bublik and Golubev saved six set points at 5-6 in the first set. Arevalo and Middelkoop await the winners of sixth seeds and 2016 titlists Jamie Murray and Bruno Soares, or Simone Bolelli and Maximo Gonzalez.
Marcus Daniell and Philipp Oswald defeated Nicholas Monroe and Frances Tiafoe 6-3, 7-5 in 87 minutes and now challenge fifth seeds and defending champions Rajeev Ram and Joe Salisbury or 10th seeds John Peers and Michael Venus in the quarter-finals.