Canada’s Gabriela Dabrowski and New Zealand’s Erin Routliffe run at a possible repeat at the U.S. Open lives on.
The defending women’s doubles champions defeated Italy’s Angelica Moratelli and Romania’s Jaqueline Cristian 7-5, 7-6 (3) on Sunday to advance into the quarterfinals.
Ottawa’s Dabrowski and Routliffe won the final two games of the second set to force a tiebreaker.
They then earned their final three points by way of forced errors from their opponents.
Dabrowski and Routliffe broke on three of their eight opportunities and fired 33 winners.
The top-seeded duo will next face the winner between Great Britain’s Harriet Dart and France’s Diane Parry, and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova and Taiwan’s Hao-Ching Chan
Defending champ Coco Gauff ousted
Defending champion Coco Gauff lost in the fourth round to Emma Navarro 6-3, 4-6, 6-3 in an all-American matchup, unable to overcome a poor performance that included more double-faults, 19, than winners, 14.
“I don’t want to lose matches like this anymore,” Gauff said, attributing her serving problems to a mix of mechanical issues and mental ones.
The No. 3-seeded Gauff had won 10 matches in a row at Flushing Meadows, including the run to her first Grand Slam title a year ago.
Four of those came after she dropped the opening set — including in the 2023 final and in her third-round victory on Friday — but the 20-year-old from Florida could not complete the comeback this time. That’s despite a mid-match, four-game run in which she claimed 14 of 17 points to steal the second set and get off to a good start in the third.
After each of her past two contests in New York, Gauff headed back out onto the practice courts to work on her serve. That didn’t help much on Sunday, including a trio of double-faults in each of three games — two of which she lost, at 1-all in the first set and, more significantly, at 1-all in the third. Eleven of the double-faults came in the final set alone.
“Had a little bit of a lull there,” said the 13th-seeded Navarro, an American who was 0-2 at the U.S. Open until this year, “but I was able to regroup … and come into the third set with a fresher mindset.”
This result follows the surprising third-round loss by defending men’s champion Novak Djokovic on Friday night, meaning the lengthy droughts without anyone winning consecutive titles in New York will continue. The last woman to win at least two in a row was Serena Williams with three from 2012-14; the last man was Roger Federer with five from 2004-08.
The Wimbledon win over Gauff earned Navarro, the 2021 NCAA singles champion for the University of Virginia, her first appearance in a major quarterfinal. Her second will come Tuesday in New York against No. 26 Paula Badosa, a 6-1, 6-2 winner against Wang Yafan.
The other women’s match that day will be between No. 2 Aryna Sabalenka — she was last year’s runner-up to Gauff and beat Elise Mertens 6-2, 6-4 on Sunday — and either No. 7 Zheng Qinwen or No. 24 Donna Vekic.
Dimitrov holds off Rublev
Earlier Sunday, with 23-time Grand Slam champion Williams watching in Arthur Ashe Stadium and offering a thumbs-up at match’s end, No. 9 men’s seed Grigor Dimitrov held off Andrey Rublev 6-3, 7-6 (3), 1-6, 3-6, 6-3 to get to the quarterfinals.
The No. 6-seeded Rublev is known for violent displays of frustration, and he needed medical attention from a trainer for a cut on his left hand after hitting it against his racket in the first set. He slapped himself in the face during a meltdown in the second-set tiebreaker, which he led 3-1 before losing the next six points.
Also moving on Saturday was No. 12 Taylor Fritz, who beat three-time Grand Slam finalist Casper Ruud 3-6, 6-4, 6-3, 6-2. Fritz’s quarterfinal opponent will be 2020 U.S. Open runner-up Alexander Zverev, who got past Brandon Nakashima 3-6, 6-1, 6-2, 6-2.
“I’m at the point now where I’m still happy to make quarterfinals, but I wouldn’t be happy with it ending here,” said Fritz, who has yet to reach a Grand Slam semifinal. “I definitely am at the point where I really want more than that.”
