Riyadh (Saudi Arabia), Nov 9 (IANS ) The No.2 seeds Gabriela Dabrowski and Erin Routliffe capped off a perfect week at the WTA Finals, defeating Wimbledon champions Taylor Townsend and Katerina Siniakova 7-5, 6-3 to win the doubles championship here on Saturday.
The win is the fourth title overall as a team for Dabrowski and Routliffe and the second of the 2024 WTA Tour season. They also won on the grass at the WTA 250 in Nottingham over the summer. This is Dabrowski's 16th career doubles title and Routliffe's eighth. To finish the week as undefeated champions, Dabrowski and Routliffe avenged their loss to Townsend and Siniakova in the Wimbledon final as well as a loss in their US Open title defense to Chan Hao-Ching and Veronika Kudermetova.
They also reversed their 2023 WTA Finals semifinal loss to Nicole Melichar-Martinez and Ellen Perez, besting the American-Australian team in the semifinals. Dabrowski and Routliffe also came from match point down to upend Olympic champions Sara Errani and Jasmine Paolini in the group stage.
Earlier, Dabrowski and Routliffe reached the semifinal where they met No.6 Melichar-Martinez and Perez while No.8 Siniakova and Townsend took on No.7 seeds Chan and Kudermetova.
New Zealand’s Routliffe, 29, is ranked No.2 in doubles, while Dabrowski, a 32-year-old Canadian, is No.5. A year ago, they lost to Melichar-Martinez and Perez in the Cancun semifinals.
“Riyadh’s been great,” Dabrowski said. “Everyone has been super helpful, super smiley, happy to have us.”
Winning the title would fetch Dabrowski and Routliffe a cool cheque of $1.055 million. Getting to know about the prize money had their eyes widened. Asked what would they do with the big payout, they came up with contrasting answers.
Routliffe said, “I might buy myself something nice. Like a bag? But we’re trying to be financially responsible adults.”
“We’re still on doubles prize money,” Dabrowski said, “so we need to put it away.”