NEW YORK – Gabriela Dabrowski and Erin Routliffe won the U.S. Open Women’s Tagway Championship for the second time in three years, ending Taylor Townsend’s whirlwind at Flushing Meadows, the third Grand Slam title for the American American against Katerina Siniaiakova.
Dabrowski and Routliffe were in third place, defeating the highest-ranked Townsend and Siniakova 6-4, 6-4 in the entertainment finals at Arthur Ashe Stadium.
Dabrowski and Routliffe then hugged to celebrate Dabrowski’s first major victory since receiving breast cancer treatment. She postponed part of the treatment so she could play at Wimbledon last year, where she and Routliffe reached the finals.
Townsend and Siniakova aim to add a U.S. Open Championship to their resume after winning Wimbledon last year and the Australian Open in January.
Townsend became one of the faces of the game, thanks to the post-match dispute in the early stages of a singles match that she hoped never happened. Townsend, a black man, said Latvian rival Jelena Ostapenko told her she had “no class” and “no education”, and the interaction became a hot topic and raised questions about whether the comments were racial.
The 29-year-old said she didn’t admit that: “It’s a stigma of “uneducated” and everything in our community, and that’s compared to the furthest thing in the truth.” Townsend’s online accompanies exponentially, she said she’s got the support of other players, and Ostapenko eventually apologized on social media, citing that English is not what she thinks means as the native language of tennis etiquette.
Townsend won the fourth round in singles and lost to Barbora Krejcikova on Sunday when she failed to convert eight games. This would have been Townsend’s first solo quarterfinal in Major.
Townsend and Siniakova ranked fifth in the Grand Slam, eliminating Venus Williams and Leylah Fernandez along the way to end their very talkative Universal Pass run. Williams returned at the age of 45, and Fernandez attracted a large crowd at the Louis Armstrong Stadium and became a major fan favorite.
Dabrowski is a 33-year-old Canadian who, 30, from New Zealand, allocated $1 million. This is the same as the man’s last Saturday winner: Marcel Granollers and Horacio Zeballos against Joe Salisbury and Neal Skupski.
