Ottawa’s Gabriela Dabrowski and New Zealand associate Erin Routliffe misplaced 6-4, 7-6 (3) to Czechia’s Katerina Siniakova and American Taylor Townsend on the WTA Finals on Tuesday.
The No. 3 seeds led 5-2 within the second set earlier than Siniakova and Townsend rallied.
Routliffe was unable to serve out the set at 5-3 as Townsend’s return winner clinched a key break.
Townsend then transformed her first match level with a service winner within the ensuing tiebreak.
Dabrowski and Routliffe had defeated the identical pair in final 12 months’s WTA Finals championship match and once more on this 12 months’s U.S. Open closing.
The victory evened the head-to-head between the 2 groups at two wins apiece.
“It is all the time powerful if you lose to the identical crew, and it is so shut — on the US Open it was only a break in every set,” Townsend stated within the on-court interview. “We labored actually arduous the previous couple of days in observe. We compiled all the info from the matches that we have performed earlier than, and got here out and simply needed to execute on the sport plan.”
The winners scored one other key break with the primary set tied 3-3. A Townsend lob adopted by Siniakova’s volley winner broke Dabrowski’s serve and put the No. 2 seeds in management.
Townsend was the one server to not be damaged within the match as she and Siniakova improved to 2-0 in group play.
Dabrowski and Routliffe, now 1-1, will face Hungary’s Tímea Babos and Brazil’s Luisa Stefani of their closing round-robin match.
