Wins for Routliffe, Venus at grass court tournaments

Erin Routliffe and Lyudmyla Kichenok are through to the semifinals of the London WTA 500 tournament, while Michael Venus and Nikola Mektic have reached the quarterfinals at ’s-Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands.

Routliffe has teamed up with Ukraine’s Lyudmyla Kichenok this week, while her regular partner Gaby Dabrowski recovers from injury. 

In their quarterfinal match, they defeated the British duo of Emma Raducanu and Katie Boulter 6-2 7-5.

The newly formed team coped well with the crowd cheering on Raducanu and Boulter and they have already formed a strong partnership.

They won both of the deciding points in this match, while Raducanu, who rarely plays doubles, and Boulter converted only one of the eight break points they had.

This was the second all-British team that Routliffe and Kichenok have defeated at Queen’s as in the first round they beat Jodie Burrage and Sonay Kartal 7-6(8) 7-6(1).

In their semifinal, they will play the winner of the match between Asia Muhammad and Demi Schuurs against Yulia Putintseva and Elena Rybakina.

Meanwhile, at ’s-Hertogenbosch Venus and Mektic beat Theo Arribage from France and Brazil’s Marcelo Demoliner 6-4 1-6 10-7.

As the scoreline suggests, Venus and Mektic lost their way slightly in the second set, but their experience as a team helped them to come through in the super tiebreak.

In the quarterfinals Venus and Mektic will go up against Zizou Bergs and Jesper De Jong.