Routliffe books third round at Wimbledon; Venus has only mixed left

Erin Routliffe is through to the third round at Wimbledon, but Michael Venus now has only the mixed doubles left to focus on.

Routliffe and her ladies’ doubles partner Gaby Dabrowski defeated Polina Kudermetova from Russia and Turkey’s Zeynep Sonmez 6-3 6-3 in one hour, 13 minutes on Friday.

Venus and Nikola Mektic meanwhile, slogged it out for two hours, 40 minutes in the 7-6(3) 5-7 7-6(6) loss to the Brazilians, Rafael Matos and Marcelo Melo.

Routliffe and Canada’s Dabrowski raced out to a 3-0 lead, with two breaks of serve and although their opponents then fought their way back into the match, it was a solid win for the tournament’s No 2 seeds.

“It was a good match, we'd never played them before,” Routliffe said. 

“They had a really good win yesterday (against Miriam Skoch and Marketa Vondrousova), so they were confident and obviously, Zynep is still in the singles. 

“She's a very good player, and obviously loves the grass. 

“So we watched their match, and knew that if we did our things that we wanted to do, and play more doubles attack the middle and made them uncomfortable, that would probably go well. So we're happy to get the win, be able to get another opportunity to play.”

As is always the case at Wimbledon, every vantage point was taken by spectators to watch this match and Routliffe says one of the great things about playing this event is seeing doubles so well supported. 

“I love being here, it's so good,” she said. 

“With doubles sometimes, we don't have as many people watching us. 

“I think that's growing now, but here I feel like no matter what court we play on, it's full.

“Making finals last year, people know us a little bit, which is nice. 

“You hear people saying, 'let's go, Gaby and Erin’. So that's really nice to have that support, we love it.

Meanwhile, Venus was disappointed that he and Mektic didn’t make the most of the opportunity they had when Matos fell behind 0-40 at 5-5 in the third set. Had they taken one of those break points, Venus would have served for the match.

But instead the Brazilians got out of trouble and clinched the match in the super tiebreak.

“The first set, they actually had more chances and probably played better and deserved to win that set,” Venus said. 

“The second set, the first three return games were 30-30, we held quite easy to love or 15 in most games in that set, and finally broke them at 5-5. 

“In the third we had 0-40 at 5-5. You miss too many second serve returns or balls that have come back afterwards, and you allow guys to hang around a bit and then you're going to end up in those situations where anything can happen the tiebreaker.” 

Venus said it was frustrating to get into strong positions and then let their opposition off the hook with an unforced error, rather than forcing the Brazilians to come up with something great.  

“On some of those points that's probably the most disappointing thing,” Venus said. 

“I thought we took care of our service games well, and was doing a good job with that and then just a couple points in the tiebreaker, I would like those back to do them differently.”