Rain, drama and a bagel: Routliffe, Dabrowski keep US Open dream alive

Erin Routliffe and Gaby Dabrowski overcame a rocky start to win their quarterfinal match at the US Open.

On Tuesday (Wednesday NZ time) the tournament’s third seeds defeated Timea Babos from Hungary and Brazil’s Luisa Stefani. 0-6 6-4 6-4.

It is the second time Routliffe and Dabrowski have won a match after losing the first set 6-0, with the other occurrence being against Wang Yafan and Xu Yifan at the Wuhan Open in October 2024.

It wasn’t so much that Routliffe and Dabrowski played poorly against Babos and Stefani in the opening set of this match, but that their opponents played incredibly well, with almost everything landed just in.

Routliffe was broken in her opening service game. Not helped by a second serve foot fault, Dabrowski suffered the same fate two games later and Routliffe went too long with a forehand on the second set point when serving at 0-5.

Routliffe started the second set with more intensity, looking to not only pump herself up, but also Dabrowski and she held serve in the second game.

Dabrowski had to save two break points when serving at 2-3 and each time she did it playing superb winning shots, to stay in the contest.

The key moment of the set came when Stefani was broken at 4-4 and the Canadian then held serve in the next game to send the match the full distance.

Babos was broken in the opening game of the third set and that gave the 2023 US Open champions the confidence they needed.

When Routliffe was serving at 40-15 and 3-2, play suspended for 15 minutes because of light rain.

Once play resumed Routliffe and Dabrowski continued from where they left off, although the Kiwi did have to fight back from being down 15-40 her serve when serving for the match.

But on the first match point, Babos put a return into the net, to secure a spot in the semifinals for Routliffe and Dabrowski.