Routliffe, Venus suffer quarterfinal losses at US Open

Erin Routliffe and Gaby Dabrowski’s reign as US Open champions has come to an end following a close, three-set loss to Chan Hao-Chin and Veronika Kudermetova in the quarterfinals, while Michael Venus also bowed out of the final grand slam of 2024.

Routliffe and Dabrowski, the 2023 US Open women's doubles champions were defeated 4-6 7-5 6-3 in two hours, 23 minutes on Grandstand Court on Tuesday (Wednesday NZ time).

Up until this quarterfinal match, Routliffe and Dabrowski hadn’t dropped a set at the US Open, but on this occasion, their opponents won more of the big points.

It was a great start from Routliffe and Dabrowski as they raced out to a 3-0 in the opening set and although Dabrowski was broken in the next game, a short time later Routliffe served it out for a one-set lead.

In the second set, the Kiwi/ Canadian duo had break points at 5-5 on Chan’s serve, which if converted would have given them an opportunity to serve for the match.

However, a few good serves from Chan got her team out of trouble and Routliffe was broken in the next game to level the match.

Routliffe and Dabrowski got a break in the deciding set, but their opponents managed to do the same twice, which meant it’s Chan and Kudermetova who advance to the quarterfinals.

As Routliffe was defending ranking points from winning last year’s US Open with Dabrowski, this result means Katerina Siniakova, who is in the semifinals with Taylor Townsend, will become the new world No when the rankings are next updated.

There was also a loss for Michael Venus in the men’s doubles quarterfinals on the same court later in the day.

Venus and his partner Neal Skupski from Britain lost 7-6(1) 6-1 to the No 4 seeds Mate Pavic from Croatia and Argentina’s Marcelo Arevalo.

Neither team had a break point for almost all of the first set, but Venus and Skupski had two set points when Pavic was serving in the 5-6 game. 

However, they weren’t able to grasp either of those opportunities and ended up losing that set 7-1 in the tiebreak.

The first three games in the second set, but then the momentum shifted away from Venus and Skupski and however much they tried, they weren’t able to wrestle it back.