Dabrowski
TORONTO — Gaby Dabrowski got off to a rocky start in her first match since she won Olympic bronze for Canada, but she and partner Erin Routliffe — the No. 1-seeded doubles team here at Dabrowki’s national open — clawed their way back to earn a comeback win Friday night.
As Dabrowski put it, following their 6-7, 7-6, [10-5] win over American Peyton Stearns and Poland’s Magda Linette: “It wasn’t pretty, but we managed.” And now they’re into the quarterfinal of Dabrowski’s home tournament.
The National Bank Open did feature a major upset earlier in the evening on Friday, though, when top-seeded Coco Gauff dropped a straight-sets decision in her third-round match on Centre Court.
Gauff lost 6-4, 6-1 to Russia’s Diana Schnaider, and the World No. 2 said she was never able to find her rhythm.
“I think overall, there is no part of my game that I felt comfortable in today,” said the 20-year-old Gauff, the reigning US Open champion. “I feel like today I just missed so many returns, backhand, forehand, serve — everything was just feeling off the whole day. It just wasn’t a good day at the office, but I can move on from it.”
Gauff had eight double faults in the loss. America’s co-flag bearer at the Olympic opening ceremony, she was coming off a disappointing finish at her debut Summer Games, where she was also upset in the third round. That experience ended just days before she began playing in Toronto, though Gauff wasn’t making any excuses.
“I mean, I knew I was going to go into this tired either way, that’s just how it is,” she said. “Yeah, there’s sometimes I question whether I should have played or not, but at the end of the day I wanted to test myself and see if I would be able to, how I would do, being mentally tired a little bit and physically fatigued. I said going into the tournament I didn’t have high expectations, but I wish I could have competed better today, even if it resulted in a loss. I don’t think I competed well.”
Over on the Grandstand, Dabrowski was playing in her first match since she won Canada’s second-ever Olympic medal in tennis, taking bronze in mixed doubles along with Felix Auger-Aliassime. She was greeted by an appreciative crowd of some 300 people, including her mom and one of her best friends.
But did things ever get tense for Dabrowski and Routliffe, the reigning US Open champions. While they got out to an early 4-1 lead in the first set against Stearns and Linette, they quickly unravelled — the set featured four straight breaks in serve — and lost in a tiebreaker in which they failed to register a single point.
The duo rebounded to take the second set 7-6, then won the deciding tiebreaker 10-5 to complete the comeback. When it was over, Dabrowski did a small fist-pump near the net, and Routliffe swiped her racquet at the air in relief before they hugged on the court.
“Could have been easy in a sense to chalk up today to opponents starting to play well and us being pretty fried with the last month and a half, I guess, and Erin’s been going non-stop from end of April — mid April, actually,” Dabrowski said. “I’m proud of how we fought through because it wasn’t an easy one. We’ve obviously lost to this team before in the first round of Beijing, so we knew that they could be tricky, but in the end we stuck together and it helped us get through.”
The pair have been playing together since 2023, and as of July, Routliffe is the world No. 1 in doubles and Dabrowski is a career-high world No. 3. “I think even today was tough for a couple moments, end of that first set, I would say, as a team communicating, but we found it in the second, we came back together strongly and carried that through to the end,” Dabrowski said.
The 32-year-old from Ottawa is looking for her 17th career women’s doubles title, and second of 2024. She won her national tournament in 2021 with Luisa Stefani of Brazil.
On Saturday, she and Routliffe will have their quarterfinal matchup against the Canadian duo of Ariana Arseneault and Mia Kupres, which guarantees a Canadian player will crack the doubles semifinal of her national open.
Since she won Olympic bronze a little more than a week ago, Dabrowski admits she hasn’t had much time to reflect on the achievement.
“I feel like I’ve just sort of thrown myself into another event and wanting to play well here, so I’ve put different pressures on myself, for sure,” she said.
But the feeling Friday night was certainly a bit of relief for the No. 1-seeded player in doubles. “We made it through,” Dabrowski said, with a laugh.
