Routliffe, Dabrowski make semifinals in Tokyo

The Kiwi/Canadian team of Erin Routliffe and Gaby Dabrowski have made it through to the semifinals of the WTA 500 tournament in Tokyo.

On Friday the duo defeated Peangtarn Plipuech from Thailand and Chinese Taipei’s Tsao Chia Yi 6-1 7-6(4).

As the scoreline suggests, it was a match of two very different sets. In the first Routliffe and Dabrowski dominated, winning 26 of the 41 points.

But in the second, they were pushed hard by Plipuech and Tsao and had five break points against them.

However, Routliffe and Dabrowski managed to save all but one of them, before coming through in the tiebreak.

This will be Routliffe and Dabrowski’s second WTA semifinal in as many weeks, but in Osaka they were forced to pull out at this stage because of a back injury Routliffe had.

Routliffe will remain No 2 in the world after this week as top-ranked Katerina Siniakova is into the semifinals in Guangzhou. However, that tournament in China is a WTA 250 level event, while Routliffe is playing at a WTA 500 tournament, so she will close the gap slightly on the Czech player.