JAMIE Murray and Bruno Soares suffered a disappointing loss to Santiago Gonzalez and Donald Young in the quarter-finals of the men’s doubles at the French Open.
The Scottish-Brazilian pair looked in control of the match and Murray served for the victory in the second set but it was Gonzalez and Young who eventually prevailed 3-6, 7-6 (7/3), 7-6 (7/4).
Murray and Soares were the highest seeds left in the tournament and had harboured hopes of adding Roland Garros to their Australian and US Open trophies from last year.
But the turning point came when Mexican Gonzalez and Young from the United States broke Murray at 5-3 in the second set.
They went on to level the match and then, after both teams had been under pressure in the third set, one stinging Gonzalez return proved the difference in the third-set tie-break.
Murray was bitterly disappointed, especially after seeing a match point come and go in the second set.
He said: “We had our chance, didn’t take it and it came back to haunt us. We couldn’t break serve in the third set and they hit two good shots at the end and that was it.
“It’s just the way it goes sometimes and you have to bounce back I guess. We should have won, we should have found a way to get through it. It was a big opportunity, a lot of guys had lost and it was pretty open.”
Murray and Soares finished last year as the No 1 team in the world, but sit sixth in the 2017 standings.
They will now turn their attention to grass, starting in Stuttgart next week, with Murray saying: “We’ve just got to do a bit better.
“We’ve thrown a few matches away this year, which could have made a decent year into a great year so far.
“That’s probably what’s most annoying for us, but there’s still a lot of the season to turn that around and still have a great year.
“The doubles game is really open, no one’s really dominating it, so our chance might come next week.”
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