‘The main reason I decided to play tennis’ – Gauff on Williams influence<\/p>\n
Video credit: SNTV<\/p>\n
The tennis icon was granted a wildcard to compete with sister Venus at SW19<\/a> this summer, having made a sensational return to the sport<\/a> after almost four years away.<\/p>\n But Serena and Muchova were unable to get past Giuliana Olmos and Erin Routliffe on Tuesday afternoon, falling to a 6-4 6-4 defeat in just over 90 minutes.<\/p>\n Routliffe formed half of the duo that Serena defeated on her victorious comeback<\/a> at the Queen’s Club Championships<\/a> earlier in June.Victoria Mboko was the 44-year-old’s partner in that 7-6(2) 6-2 win, but an MCL injury to the Canadian<\/a> put paid to their progression in London.<\/p>\n In Berlin, Australian doubles specialist Routliffe paid tribute to the 23-time Grand Slam singles champion despite defeating her.<\/p>\n “It was such a fun experience and to play here on centre court a first-round doubles. We love that Serena is playing doubles. We play doubles all the time and it makes people watch more doubles,” Routliffe said.<\/p>\n “Everyone’s going to be watching her match, so to be able to be on the other side of the net is such an honour.”<\/p>\n Routliffe’s doubles partner Olmos added: “It was honestly an honour for me to be able to share the court with Serena. It’s awesome that she’s back.<\/p>\n “The draw came out a few days ago so I was mentally preparing for that. I just tried to focus on our side of the court, just engage a lot with Erin and not really think too much about her.<\/p>\n “Obviously it’s hard – you see her every single point. But I just tried to stay focused on each point and have fun today.”<\/p>\n Meanwhile, two-time Grand Slam champion Coco Gauff has said she is excited to potentially share the court with her idol – extending an invitation for Serena to pair up with her at a future tournament.<\/p>\n The American extended an invitation to her compatriot to compete together in doubles “one day.”<\/p>\n Gauff said: “Yeah, she [Serena] is definitely one of the main reasons why I decided to play tennis, for sure.<\/p>\n “Yeah, it’d be really cool. I’m hoping that one day she’ll hit up my line to play doubles. That would be really, really cool. <\/p>\n “And if she were to compete in singles, it would be cool to step on the court with her just because she’s a legend and someone I looked up to. I’m very excited to be in the same spaces as her again.”<\/p>\n Add TNT Sports as a preferred source\u00a0here<\/a> to enjoy more\u00a0content like this.Stream top tennis action live on TNT Sports and HBO Max<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"‘The main reason I decided to play tennis’ – Gauff on Williams influence Video credit: SNTV The tennis…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":644960,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[217326,101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-644959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-berlin-womens-doubles-2026-w","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644959","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=644959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/644960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=644959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=644959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=644959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}