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Erin Routliffe is one match away from claiming a grand slam title and will become the first New Zealand woman ever to play in a final at the US Open.
The Auckland born Routliffe and her Canadian partner Gaby Dabrowski defeated the favoured Hsieh Su-Wei from Chinese Taipei and China’s Wang Xinyu 6-1 7-6 (4) at Louis Armstrong Stadium on Friday (Saturday NZ time).
Routliffe would be the first Kiwi since Michael Venus at the French Open in 2017 to win a grand slam title if she was victorious in the final which will start at 5am Monday New Zealand time.
Routliffe and Dabrowski blew away the No 8 seeds in the first set, winning the first 10 points on their opponents’ serve.
In the second set they had to work harder and twice looked like they could have messed up this golden opportunity to play in a grand slam final.
Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images
Gabriela Dabrowski of Canada, right, and Erin Routliffe of New Zealand (file photo).
Dabrowski was broken at 5-4 when serving for the match and Routliffe suffered the same fate when serving at 6-5.
However, despite these setbacks they kept their composure and won the last three points in the tiebreak to win it 7-4.
Routliffe and Dabrowski looked most impressive when they came to the net as a unit, forming an impenetrable wall that their opponents struggled to get through.
“That’s the No 1 game plan with most people we play,” Routliffe said.
“It’s to make them feel flustered and that’s our best way to do it, because we’re two big girls and it is hard with our reach to get it past us.
“Gaby has an amazing overhead, I’ve been working on my overhead, which I think is getting a lot better.
“We want them to feel like they’ve got nowhere to go and that’s one of the ways to make them feel like that.”
The crowd, who were mostly cheering for Hsieh and Wang, really got into the match during the latter stages of the second set, when neither team was able to hold serve.
Having two opportunities to serve for the match and failing on each occasion, could have led to Routliffe and Dabrowski crumbling, but they stayed strong.
“The first time we served for it, with Gaby serving, she got broken to love. I was thinking about Taylor (Townsend) and Leylah (Fernandez, in the quarterfinal), because it was a similar thing with them. Third set, 5-4.
“But there were breaks happening all the time. I used to get really upset when we’d get broken. Not us as a team, but even just me.
“Now I’m like ‘everyone’s breaking everyone,’. Women are such good returners and we don’t have as big a serve as the men, where it’s just going to happen.
“Of course, when you’re serving for the match, you have it on your racquet, but when I served they hit two clean winners on the outside.
“If they’re going to serve like that, you just have to think that was too good.
“But we kept thinking of the process. We kept having opportunities and let them slip by, but we knew we’d keep getting opportunities.
“That’s the mental side which is good for that and we brought that from our confidence of closing out the Taylor and Leylah match.”
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