Venus and Puetz reach Paris Masters semi finals

Michael Venus and his German partner Tim Puetz have reached back-to-back ATP Masters 1000 semi-finals. 

A day after knocking over second seeds Rajeev Ram and Joe Salisbury, they’ve beaten German Andreas Mies and Frenchman Fabrice Martin to reach the last four at the Paris Masters in France. 

Venus and Puetz have won 7-5 7-5 in 1 hour 40 minutes and turned in another fine serving performance. They saved three of the four break points against their serve and broke their opponents three times from seven chances. 

“It was a different kind of match today, both guys hit the ball hard and tried to take control of the point from the first shot.” Venus said. 

“Once we got used to the speed, we did a good job of figuring out what worked on our serve games and found ways to get into their return games which created chances for us, and we were lucky enough to take some of them.” 

Venus and Puetz are developing into a formidable team having also reached the semi-finals at the prestigious Indian Wells Masters last month. And although they will miss playing at the ATP Finals in London next month. (Currently 15^th in the race where eight teams qualify) they would have been right in the mix if they had played the full season together. Venus and Puetz only joined forces after the French Open in June and have already won one title together, the ATP 500 tournament in Hamburg. 

Their partnership has also been disrupted by the Olympics where Venus teamed with Marcus Daniell to win bronze before Puetz suffered a back injury in the second round of the US Open forcing him to take a month off.