Kiwis come out to cheer Routliffe, Venus to victory

Erin Routliffe and Michael Venus made Kia Arena feel like a little bit of New Zealand at the Australian Open on Saturday night.

The Kiwis won a hugely entertaining first round mixed doubles match against Latvia’s Jelena Ostapenko and Joe Salisbury from Britain 3-6 6-3 10-1 in front of a big crowd on the fourth largest court at Melbourne Park.

The vast majority of the few thousand spectators in crowd were New Zealanders and made it known throughout the match who they were there to support, cheering them on after every point they won and going on the same emotional roller coaster that Routliffe and Venus were on, because this wasn’t a straight forward win.

Routliffe was the only player broken in the opening set and there were breaks to each team early in the second. But Ostapenko was broken again at 3-4, which was followed by Venus quickly winning four points in a row on his serve.

It was oneway traffic in the super tiebreak, with the only point Ostapenko and Salisbury winning in it coming from a Routliffe double fault.

On match point there was another huge cheer from the crowd, with cries of ‘Kiwi, Kiwi’ ringing out.

Venus and Routliffe both said they loved playing in that atmosphere and being cheered on by a vociferous crowd.

“If you have that many Kiwis in one place, and then you have a DJ putting on music like that, the whole atmosphere was awesome and so much fun to play in,” Venus said. 

“I think it actually really helped us after a tough first set, losing that and staying in there, it kept us going, and pumped us up towards the end and I think we together played really well.

Routliffe missed the recent ASB Classic because of a rib injury, so didn’t get that experience of playing in front of a Kiwi crowd in Auckland, but she got the next best thing in this match in Melbourne. 

“It was awesome. I would say they were probably 80% cheering for us, which was really cool,” Routliffe said. 

“We loved it. It does make a difference, and so hopefully they come for our next one.”

In the second round they play Alexandra Panova and Lloyd Glasspool. This match will be played on Monday or Tuesday, Routliffe and her partner Gaby Dabrowski, who game to watch this match, should play their third round match in the women’s doubles on Monday against a yet to be decided opponent.