Maple leaf Kiwi Erin Routliffe’s triumphant path to the majors

After the most successful year of her tennis career, Erin Routliffe still has big goals for 2024 and also has one eye on another appearance at the Olympics in 2028.
It’s just over 12 months since Routliffe and her doubles partner, Gabriela Dabrowski, won the US Open. With that, Routliffe became only the second New Zealand woman to win a major in the Open era, after Judy Connor, who won the women’s doubles title at the 1979 Australian Open.
Routliffe and Dabrowski went on to make the final at Wimbledon earlier this year, and although they couldn’t overcome their opponents Katerina Siniakova and Taylor Townsend on the famous grass courts of SW19, 29-year-old Routliffe was confirmed shortly afterwards as the number one doubles player in the world in the official rankings.
The pair returned to New York in August to defend their title at Flushing Meadows, a run that ended at the quarter final stage, following a close, three-set loss to Chan Hao-Chin and Veronika Kudermetova.
“I think we had a lot of opportunities but they played the big points well. It was still a good tournament for us. Obviously we try to win every tournament we play and every match we play but they played well and you can’t win them all I guess,” Routliffe says.
As the season heads towards its conclusion, Routliffe’s next tournaments will be in Asia, with the China Open at the end of this month, followed by the Wuhan Open in early October. From there, it’s the Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo later in October before the WTA Finals in Saudi Arabia between November 2-9.
As well as her success with Dabrowski, Routliffe won the Cincinnati Open last month with Asia Muhammad, all the more impressive as it was first time the good friends had played together. She also teamed up with fellow Kiwi Lulu Sun in Paris as they played at their first Olympics.
The change of partners she’s experienced in the past couple of months is something Routliffe was more used to in the earlier stages of her career, but it’s not something that fazes her; instead, it’s part of the journey.
“That’s how you become a really good doubles player. You’re able to be successful with anyone and you’re able to bring out someone’s best and just be a really supportive and positive partner,” Routliffe says.
“I try to do that no matter who I’m playing with. I try to bring the fun to it and make it more of a light moment because you have those expectations and in sport we’re all really competitive and in those moments we’re just trying to bring the best out of each other. Sometimes you just get caught up in the moment of trying to win, so I just try to have fun with everyone I play with and just be a supportive partner whilst trying to bring the best out of myself.”
Routliffe and Dabrowski’s partnership is one that came about when they had both split from their playing partners and it started with a simple text from the Kiwi.
 “I think she saw the potential in my game and now we’ve built this partnership together,” Routliffe says.
“Our goals are [getting] bigger and bigger and we talk about that quite a bit. Having success together does change the expectations you have. We’ve been just trying to stay in the moment, stay focused on the process and everything like that. In sport it’s normal for your expectations to change when you become more successful but we realise that if we do our stuff and focus on the things we can control that normally it works out well for us.”
Routliffe was born in Auckland when her parents, Robert and Catherine, were in the middle of an around-the-world sailing adventure back in 1995. The couple welcomed two other daughters before they returned to their native Canada just before Erin turned five.
Shortly afterwards, Routliffe started to play tennis and competed in her first tournament when she was 10 or 11. It was just one of a number of sports that she enjoyed growing up, alongside football, volleyball and skiing and even when she started to concentrate on tennis at the relatively late age of 15, she was still playing football and volleyball at high school.
“I think, in tennis a lot of the time, people go all-in very early in life just because it’s such an intense sport and it’s hard. You need to do a lot of training and a lot of fitness when you’re young. I was lucky. I got to go to regular high school until I was halfway through grade 11 so it was nice,” Routliffe says.
Routliffe went on to enjoy a standout college career at the University of Alabama where she won the prestigious Junior Orange Bowl and was also a two-time winner of the NCAA doubles college championship alongside Maya Jansen in 2014 and 2015. But as her time at Alabama was coming to an end, Routliffe, who had already played for the Canadian Junior Fed Cup team, was starting to become disillusioned with her future pathway in Canada.
“I was about to graduate college and my parents had told me a bunch of stories about New Zealand because I was quite young when I left. I didn’t really have much recollection of New Zealand but it was a big part of me. My parents reached out to Tennis New Zealand to see if there was any interest or if it was even possible to represent them and they were really interested,” Routliffe says.
Routliffe was given a qualifying wildcard to the ASB Classic in Auckland in early 2017 and conversations began in earnest. Tennis New Zealand was certainly interested in facilitating a switch and later that year, the International Tennis Federation allowed her to switch nationalities. She lived with family friends in Mt Eden and represented New Zealand for the first time later that year, in the Fed Cup, now known as the Billy Jean King Cup.
“It felt like a second home and it felt like the right decision. I wanted to make tennis in New Zealand more prominent and that ultimately was the goal so it was always a big part of me. I moved to New Zealand after university and that was my base for a while. It was a great opportunity and I’m so happy I did that, it’s been amazing,” says Routliffe.
Wearing the Silver Fern is something that Routliffe cherishes, whether it be at the Billy Jean cup, or the Olympics. Her father Robert would watch All Blacks games on TV when she was younger, so she had seen the haka on many occasions, but her experience in Paris was special.
“I’ve loved my team experiences. To go to the Olympics, it was just such an amazing experience to be part of Team New Zealand there. I was so grateful and loved it, being part of that community and so welcomed. When we got into New Zealand House and received the haka, it was one of the most emotional moments and it was just so amazing and it felt like it was meant to be. It just makes me want to work harder and play in Los Angeles in 2028 hopefully.”
Routliffe and Dabrowski are playing at a level now where grand slam titles are the target, but even though she’ll be 33, Routliffe would love to taste Olympic competition one more time.
“All year we’ve been trying to peak for the slams and then obviously when you add the Olympics into that, that’s a fifth one for us, but that’s definitely a goal that I have. I would love to be at LA 2028, that would be epic.”