Kiwi doubles specialist Erin Routliffe has lost her second round match at Indian Wells and will now set her sights on Miami

Erin Routliffe and her Chilean partner Alexa Guarachi lost their Round of 16 match 3-6, 4-6 against the higher-ranked pairing of Gabriela Dabrowski (CAN) and Luisa Stefani (BRA) on Wednesday afternoon (NZT).

Routliffe and Guarachi started their 2023 Indian Wells campaign over the weekend with an impressive victory against China’s Yifan Xu and Zhaoxuan Yang, both of whom are ranked higher.

The New Zealand/Chilean combo will take plenty of positives from that Round of 32 win and will now leave the California desert for Miami Gardens, Florida.

Routliffe and Guarachi will play together at the 2023 Miami Open this month – another WTA 1000 event.

Routliffe is currently ranked 34th in the world for doubles.

The 27-year-old picked up her third WTA 250 doubles title at the ATX Open in Austin, Texas last week with Indonesian partner Aldila Sutjiadi.

Routliffe said afterwards that the tournament win would push her in the direction she wanted to be in as her season progressed.

“I want to put myself in the position to win bigger titles and go deep in bigger tournaments, week in and week out, so this just helped with that and any time I can get matches and try to work on my game and work on my mental game, my physical game, all that is a positive.”

Routliffe won the Citi Open in Washington DC in August last year with American partner Jessica Pegula. Her first WTA title came at the Internazionali Femminili di Palermo (Palermo Ladies Open) with Belgian Kimberley Zimmermann in July 2021.

Routliffe also won a doubles title just before Christmas last year at the EVES Open – ITF World Tennis Tour: Tauranga (W25), with Kiwi partner Paige Hourigan.