Routliffe, Dabrowski find unusual way to win in Strasbourg

Erin Routliffe and Gaby Dabrowski have made it through to the semifinals in Strasbourg, France, with a 6-4 2-6 10-8 win over Cristina Bucsa from Spain and China’s Xu Yifan.

The match was the first time this year that Routliffe and Dabrowski have won a match despite winning fewer points than their opponents.

That was mainly down to the second set, where they dropped two service games and weren’t able to get a break against Bucsa and Xu.

But the tournament’s top seeds managed to take out the third set super tiebreak, with the all-too-familiar score of 10-8.

In the semifinals, Routliffe and Dabrowski will play against Timea Babos from Hungary and Brazil’s Luisa Stefani, who had a walkover in their quarterfinal match.

Regardless of how Routliffe goes over the remainder of this WTA 500 tournament, she will remain at No 3 in the world rankings when they are next updated, but Dabrowski can move up to No 4 if they win the title.

Meanwhile, Michael Venus and Nikola Mektic lost their first round match 6-3 6-3 against Sander Arends and Luke Johnson at the ATP 500 tournament in Hamburg, Germany.

Lulu Sun didn’t enter a tournament this week, preferring to train ahead of Roland Garros, which begins on Sunday.