New Zealand's Erin Routliffe's spectacular doubles form has continued winning through to her first WTA tour final. The 23 year old and her Chilean doubles partner Alexa Guarachi have won an epic semi-final at the Citi Open in Washington DC.
They've beaten American's Lauren Davis and Kristie Ahn 7-5 3-6, 10-8 in a match affected by a lengthy rain delay when Routliffe and Guarachi were just three points from victory.
They left the court leading 7-5 in the Match tiebreak and resumed after a three hour rain delay. After their opponents levelled at 8-8, Routliffe and Guarachi regained their composure and closed out the win in 1 hour 39.
Routliffe who was born in New Zealand but grew up in Canada, switched allegiances to New Zealand last year and played for the New Zealand Fed Cup team in February. She has rocketed up more than 200 places in the doubles rankings to 114 after starting the year ranked 339. Her win today will lift her into the top 100 for the first time.
Top Kiwi men's doubles player Michael Venus and his South African doubles partner Raven Klaasen have continued their red hot form at the ATP 500 tournament in Washington DC. Playing their first tournament since their run through to the Wimbledon final, Venus and Klaasen have battled their way into the semi-finals at the Citi Open.
They've beaten the experienced Colombian team of Robert Farah and Juan Sebastian Cabal 6-7 (4) 7-6 (4) 10-6 in exactly 2 hours. Venus and Klaasen saved four match points in the second set and only managed to convert one of 11 break point chances against the Colombians. But in the end they played a strong match tie break to prevail.
Their reward is a semi-final against 4th seeds Jamie Murray and Bruno Soares after they ended the run of Kiwi Artem Sitak and his Indian doubles partner Divij Sharan.
Murray and Soares rallied from dropping the first set to 4-6 6-1 10-5 .Sitak and Sharan made a brilliant start to the match, breaking serve with their only chance of the first set early and then saved four break points on their way to winning the first set.
But the 4th seeds took control with an early break in the second set and broke serve twice in the set to take the match into a deciding first to 10 point match tie break.
After Sitak and Sharan led 3-2, Murray and Soares won the next six points to lead 8-3 and eventually closed out the match in 1 hour 16. Sitak will now head to Toronto where he will aim to team up with a top ranked singles player to try to play the Toronto Masters 1000 tournament next week.
Meanwhile 21 year old Kiwi Paige Hourigan has battled through to the semi-finals at the ITF $25,000 US tournament in Fort Worth Texas.
