Winning start for Klaasen, Ram

Cape Town - South Africa’s Raven Klaasen and his American doubles partner, Rajeev Ram, won their first match at the 2017 Australian Open on Thursday.

The No 6 seeds defeated Paolo Lorenzi from Italy and Aliaksandr Bury from Belarus in straight sets, 6-3, 7-5.

In the second round, they will face the unseeded duo of Marcus Daniell (New Zealand) and Marcelo Demoliner (Brazil).

Klaasen, who is the only South African competing in the main draw of the tournament, reached the final of the Australian Open in 2014, when he and partner Eric Butorac lost to Lukasz Kubot and Robert Lindstedt.

Klaasen and Ram had an impressive 2016 season, winning one title (Chengdu, China) and made the ATP World Tour Finals, where they finished runners-up to Henri Kontinen (Finland) and John Peers (Australia).