Erin Routliffe and Gaby Dabrowski are safely through to the doubles final in Zhengzhou, but I don’t think I’ve hard many harder times trying to watch a match than this one, with all the streams that I had going freezing time and again. By the end I don’t think that I had seen more than half the points although, luckily, I had seen most of the important ones. The irony is that I have a stream of the India-Pakistan cricket match going as well, and that one has been perfect from the start.
Jiang Xin-yu served first when she and Guo Han-yu played Dabrowski and Routliffe in tonight’s semi-final. She was pretty happy to take the opening point with a beautiful forehand winner down the tramlines, and went on to hold serve comfortably before hitting a fabulous backhand lob to win Dabrowski’s second point.
An ace took Dabrowski to 40-30, but she lost the next point before winning the decider with a nice angled forehand volley. Guo then went to 0-40, although the only point I saw was the second, when her backhand hit the net cord and bounced back. She lost the game when Jiang was forced to hit a backhand into the net.
Routliffe held serve to consolidate the break before Jian held to love, winning her third point with a beautiful half inside-out forehand into the tramlines. Dabrowski held serve rather more easily than she had in her first game, and then a fabulous intercept backhand volley from Routliffe brought up more break points when Guo served again.
She saved the first break point with a huge forehand volley down the left side of the court, and got to deuce when a backhand lob from Dabrowski went just a bit too far. I don’t know what happened on the deciding point, except that Routliffe and Dabrowski broke again, and Routliffe served out the set to love after 30 minutes.
I only saw a handful of points in the first four games of the second set, where Jiang, Dabrowski and Guo all held serve comfortably, but that all changed when Routliffe had her first game. Jiang won the third point with a fabulous backhand return down the tramlines, and her team won the next point as well. Routliffe saved the break points by the simple expedient of acing both her opponents on their forehand side, but she lost the deciding point. Once again it was one that I didn’t see.
Jiang won a great rally in the next game with a beautiful cross-court forehand volley, but her partner found the net with the same type of shot on the next point, and that took them to deuce. Dabrowski hit a nice backhand volley down the left side of the court to win the deciding point, and they were back on serve.
It was Guo’s turn to hit a beautiful backhand lob in the next game, this one landing just about on the baseline, and a double fault from Dabrowski meant that she needed to save a break point. She managed that, but Routliffe lost a good rally on the deciding point when she was forced to hit a backhand volley wide.
Jiang won the first point of the next game with a beautiful forehand volley, but the best point that I actually saw was the next one, where Dabrowski ended a fantastic 11 shot rally with a fabulous cross-court forehand lob. Guo dropped herself back to deuce when she ended a short rally with an overhit forehand volley, but she won another invisible deciding point.
Routliffe held comfortably to keep her team in touch, and they got the break back when Jiang lost her serve with an unforced error. Dabrowski should have easily levelled the scores, but she hit an awful overhead volley into the net to give away a deuce. That became a set point, and Guo converted it with a beautiful forehand return down the tramlines. The set had taken 43 minutes.
Jiang was forced into a forehand error to lose the first point of the match tie-break, and Dabrowski lost her first as well before winning the second with a beautiful cross-court forehand volley. Jiang overhit a forehand to lose Guo’s first point, but they got that mini-break back as well when Routliffe was forced to hit an inside-out forehand over the baseline.
I didn’t see the next few points, but Jiang lost her second serve, so they were down a mini-break when they changed ends for the second time. Routliffe lost her second point to a fabulous cross-court forehand return onto the baseline by Jiang off a second serve to get them back on terms, but a fabulous inside-out winner from Dabrowski when Jiang served got her team another mini-break.
More importantly, it gave them two match points, and the first got converted when Jiang was forced to hit a forehand into the net. That ended the match after an hour and 28 minutes, the final score being 6-2, 4-6, 10-7. Sunday night’s final will be against the third seeds, Shuko Aoyama and Ena Shibahara, who Dabrowski and Routliffe beat in Cincinnati after the Japanese pair won the Canadian Open.