Routliffe, Muhammad 1st round Australian Open win
- editor59343
- 2 minutes ago
- 2 min read
A good start to the Australian Open doubles for New Zealand's Erin Routliffe and American Asia Muhammad.
The sixth seeded pair won their opening match in Melbourne over Linda Noskova from the Czech Republic and Rebecca Sramkova (Slovakia) 6-4 6-4 in just under an hour and a half on court 12.
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In their first Grand Slam tournament together, the pair looked steady in breezy conditions, breaking Noskova's serve in the third game.
Obviously really happy to get through that one as a new partnership," said Routliffe who said it was a struggle with the strong breeze.
"It was really nice to get thorugh in the wind It was swirly, you couldn't figure out where it was going, so our first serve percentage was low, too low, but if you can still win on your second serve that's good, but the goal is still to get your first serve better forfuture games."
They held the lead until Muhammad had her serve broken in the eighth game, however the Kiwi-American team then took apart Sramkova's serve and had Routliffe finish off the first set.
The second set was messy as Noskova lost her serve straight away with Routliffe and Muhammad racing to a 3-1 lead before the European pair turned the table to win three games in a row for a 4-3 lead.
However, Routliffe held serve to equal the score before Noskova again struggled and dropped her serve.
Muhammed then held to take the match despite the combination having only a 50 percent first serve success rate.
They play Poland's Magda Linette and Shuko Aoyama (Japan) in the second round.
Routliffe will play Mixed Doubles with Swede Andre Goransson. They face French pair Kristina Mladenovic and Manuel Guinard in the first round.
