{"id":433800,"date":"2026-01-26T06:28:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-26T06:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/433800\/"},"modified":"2026-01-26T06:28:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-26T06:28:09","slug":"tennis-nzs-erin-routliffe-knocked-out-of-australian-open","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/433800\/","title":{"rendered":"Tennis: NZ’s Erin Routliffe knocked out of Australian Open"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"New<\/p>\n

\nNew Zealand’s Erin Routliffe and her doubles partner Asia Muhammad.
\nPhoto: Joshua Devenie \/ www.photosport.nz\n<\/p>\n

New Zealand’s top doubles player, Erin Routliffe, has had her Australian Open come to an end in the third round.<\/p>\n

The Kiwi doubles star, and her partner Asia Muhammad, were upset by Ena Shibahara of Japan and Russian veteran Vera Zvonareva 7-5, 6-3, 6-1.<\/p>\n

Breaks were traded in the fourth and fifth games of the first set before the sixth seeds led 5-4, only to drop the next three games in a row and the set 7-5.<\/p>\n

In the second set, Routliffe and Muhammad gained the only break in the fourth game on Shibahara’s serve and kept the lead as the American rounded out the set 6-3.<\/p>\n

However, the third set was a struggle for the Kiwi and American combination in their first Slam together.<\/p>\n

Muhammad was broken in the second game and Routliffe in the fourth as Zvonareva and Shibahara raced through the set and match 6-1.<\/p>\n

It was a case of winding back the clock for the 41-year-old Zvonareva.<\/p>\n

Zvonareva peaked at No. 2 in the singles rankings in 2010, the same year she finished runner-up at Wimbledon and the US Open.<\/p>\n

Zvonareva made a low-key comeback at the ITF W100 in Dubai in December, marking her first professional tournament since June 2024.<\/p>\n

Routliffe and her mixed doubles partner, Andre Goransson of Sweden, were knocked out of the tournament yesterday.<\/p>\n

Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero<\/a>, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New Zealand’s Erin Routliffe and her doubles partner Asia Muhammad. Photo: Joshua Devenie \/ www.photosport.nz New Zealand’s top…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":433801,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[328,49,48,327,44,329,326,324,325,82,593],"class_list":["post-433800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-audio","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-current-affairs","tag-news","tag-podcasts","tag-public-radio","tag-radio-new-zealand","tag-rnz","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=433800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433800\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/433801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}