No. 2 seeds Katerina Siniakova and Taylor Townsend avenged last year\u2019s WTA Finals Riyadh final, rallying from 5\u20132 down in the second set to defeat No. 3 seeds Gabriela Dabrowski and Erin Routliffe 6\u20134, 7\u20136(3) and move to 2\u20130 in the Liezel Huber Group.<\/p>\n
WTA Finals: Scores<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Draws<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Order of play<\/a><\/p>\n The victory drew the head-to-head between the teams level at two wins each and avenged a 6\u20134, 6\u20134 loss to Dabrowski and Routliffe in the US Open final. That setback on Townsend\u2019s home turf lingered — and fueled a more studied approach in Riyadh.<\/p>\n “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.”<\/p>\n Not that was an entirely data-driven win. Asked how they overturned the second-set deficit, Townsend responded with a grin that they had been “swinging for the fences and keeping the vibe going.”<\/p>\n The American was, by some distance, the best server on court. She was the only player not to be broken — indeed, she never faced a break point and only lost seven points behind her delivery. For the most part, the other three players also served solidly — meaning that the contest’s three breaks of serve proved pivotal.<\/p>\n At 3-3 in the first set, Siniakova and Townsend delivered a brilliant return game — two clean return winners, a Townsend lob and a Siniakova volley winer — to break Dabrowski; In the ensuing tiebreak, Townsend and Siniakova’s power proved too hot for Dabrowski and Routliffe to handle at net on two key points, and Townsend converted her first match point with a service winner.<\/p>\n “I did a couple of mistakes and that’s how they get the break,” Siniakova said of the second set. “So I was like, ‘I need to focus, I need to keep it together,’ and I was just so happy that Taylor held me up.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"No. 2 seeds Katerina Siniakova and Taylor Townsend avenged last year\u2019s WTA Finals Riyadh final, rallying from 5\u20132…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":243601,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,1602,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-243600","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis","10":"tag-text","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243600\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nServing at 1-2 in the second set, Siniakova lapsed into error to hand the break to her opponents;
\nRoutliffe was unable to serve out the set at 5-3, with a flashy Townsend return winner sealing the break back.<\/p>\n