Australian Open: Jamie Murray & Bethanie Mattek-Sands lose mixed doubles final

Jamie Murray missed out on an eighth Grand Slam title when he and Bethanie Mattek-Sands lost to Nikola Mektic and Barbora Krejcikova in the Australian Open mixed doubles final.

Britain’s Murray and his American partner were beaten 5-7 6-4 10-1 by the Croatian-Czech pairing.

It was a first Grand Slam title for Mektic, while Krejcikova retained the title she won with Rajeev Ram in 2019.

Britain’s Joe Salisbury is in Sunday’s men’s doubles final alongside Ram.

Murray and Mattek-Sands got off to the worst possible start when the Scot was broken in the opening game.

They stayed behind until Mektic was serving for the set at 5-4 and double-faulted on the deciding point to hand Murray and Mattek-Sands the break back.

The Briton and his partner then held serve with a Murray smash before breaking Krejcikova with a beautiful backhand down the line from Mattek-Sands to take the set.

But they then found themselves a double break down in the second set and while they clawed back one of the breaks, they could not stop the final heading into a match tie-break, where Murray and Mattek-Sands were outplayed.

“The first time Beth’s been lost for words,” said Murray, 33.

“We fought as hard as we can but came up short, so congrats on a Grand Slam title.

“It was a good, fun atmosphere to play. Beth, thanks for being a great partner, we have had a lot of success but more importantly a lot of fun. We’ll try and come back next year and get a win.”

Murray had been bidding to break Virginia Wade’s record to become Britain’s most successful Grand Slam player of the Open era.

He has two men’s doubles titles, from the Australian Open and US Open in 2016, and five mixed doubles titles.

After winning Wimbledon with Jelena Jankovic in 2007, he collected back-to-back titles with Martina Hingis at Wimbledon and the US Open in 2017 before successive US Open titles with Mattek Sands in 2018 and 2019.