Venus and Daniell to play for bronze

Marcus Daniell and Michael Venus bowed out of gold medal reckoning when they were outgunned by Croatia in their men’s doubles tennis semi-final.

Daniell and Venus went down 6-2, 6-2 to the fired up team of Marin Cilic and Ivan Dodig and will tomorrow play off for the bronze medal.

The New Zealanders never really got into the match. The Croatians served extremely well and were constantly forcing the pace.

“You have to give them credit,” said Venus, 33. “They played extremely well and put us under extreme pressure. They never gave us any room to breathe or relax.”

Daniell, 31, said it was extremely disappointing to be out of the running for the gold medal.

“But we’re still going to be playing off for bronze and we have to get ourselves up and get excited about that. If you’d told us a week ago that we’d be in the bronze medal match, we’d probably have taken that. I mean, you grow up hearing about the Olympics and dreaming of being on the podium and we get that chance tomorrow.”

The New Zealanders meet another Americans Tennys Sandgren and Austin Krajicek in the third place play-off.