Into the US Open final for Routliffe and Dabrowski

Friday, 08 September 2023

Erin Routliffe has made history, becoming the first Kiwi female to make it to any final at the US Open.

Routliffe and her Canadian partner Gaby Dabrowski are into the women's doubles final in New York, following their 6-1 7-6 (4) win over Chinese Taipei's Hsieh Su-Wei and Wang Xinyu from China in their semifinal clash on Louis Armstrong Stadium.

The match lasted one hour 42 minutes and after a one-sided first set, the resilient Hsieh and Wang put up more of a battle in the second. 

Dabrowski and Routliffe came out firing for this semifinal, with Hsieh and Wang both getting broke to love in each of their first service games and from that point Routliffe and Dabrowski ran away with the opening set.

Routliffe and Dabrowski got a break in the third game of the next set to put them into a strong position for the match.

But Routliffe was broken at 2-1 after a long battle, getting called for a foot fault on her second serve at deuce, then double-faulting.

Dabrowski was broken at 2-3 and all of a sudden this victory wasn’t looking so assured, as for the first time in the match the Chinese and Chinese Taipei player were a break up.

However, Hsieh was broken to love in the next game to make it 3-4 and back on serve.

Both teams were incapable of holding serve for the rest of the set, so it came down to the tiebreaker and there were nerves all around as firstly Wang double-faulted, then Dabrowski did the same. 

The big moment came when Routliffe crunched a Wang serve at 4-4. Wang overhit a return on the next point and on the following one, match point, Routliffe stepped in to put away a winner at the net.

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