WTA

Ottawa’s Gabriela Dabrowski and New Zealand partner Erin Routliffe lost 6-4, 7-6 (3) to Czechia’s Katerina Siniakova and American Taylor Townsend at the WTA Finals on Tuesday.

The No. 3 seeds led 5-2 in the second set before Siniakova and Townsend rallied.

Routliffe was unable to serve out the set at 5-3 as Townsend’s return winner clinched a key break.

Townsend then converted her first match point with a service winner in the ensuing tiebreak.

Dabrowski and Routliffe had defeated the same pair in last year’s WTA Finals championship match and again in this year’s U.S. Open final.

The victory evened the head-to-head between the two teams at two wins apiece.

“It’s always tough when you lose to the same team, and it’s so close — at the US Open it was just a break in each set,” Townsend said in the on-court interview. “We worked really hard the last few days in practice. We compiled all the data from the matches that we’ve played before, and came out and just wanted to execute on the game plan.”

The winners scored another key break with the first set tied 3-3. A Townsend lob followed by Siniakova’s volley winner broke Dabrowski’s serve and put the No. 2 seeds in control.

Townsend was the only server not to be broken in the match as she and Siniakova improved to 2-0 in group play.

Dabrowski and Routliffe, now 1-1, will face Hungary’s Tímea Babos and Brazil’s Luisa Stefani in their final round-robin match.