Katerina Siniakova has played the three Grand Slams in 2024 with three different partners, and on Saturday, she’ll play for her second major title of the season — this time with Taylor Townsend at Wimbledon.
The fourth seeded Czech-American duo upset No.1 seeds Hsieh Su-wei and Elise Mertens 3-6, 6-4, 6-4 in Friday’s semifinals, and will face No.2 seeds Gabriela Dabrowski and Erin Routliffe in the championship match.
The 2 hour and 12-minute triumph for Townsend and Siniakova marked Hsieh’s first loss in doubles at Wimbledon since 2018. She won the title in 2019 and 2023 with Barbora Strycova, and the 2021 title with Mertens. There was no Wimbledon in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and in 2022, she did not play.
Incredible scenes on No.1 Court!
Defending champion Su-Wei Hsieh loses her first ladies’ doubles match since 2018, as Taylor Townsend and Katerina Siniakova reach their first Wimbledon final together 😍#Wimbledon pic.twitter.com/qt9c8lefFI
— Wimbledon (@Wimbledon) July 12, 2024
Siniakova, an eight-time Grand Slam singles champion, reached the semifinals at the Australian Open with Storm Hunter, before partnering Coco Gauff to win at Roland Garros (a last-minute pairing after Townsend and Jessica Pegula both missed the clay-court major due to injury). She’ll be bidding for a third Wimbledon title after she and Barbora Krejcikova were champions in 2018 and 2022.
Townsend, meanwhile, will be playing for her first Grand Slam doubles title in her third final: She was runner-up with Caty McNally at the 2022 US Open to Siniakova and Krejcikova, and lost with Leylah Fernandez to Hsieh and Wang Xinyu in Paris last year.
Dabrowski and Rouliffe, meanwhile, are seeking their second major as a pair after winning the US Open last year, and Dabrowski has returned to the Wimbledon final after finishing runner-up with Xu Yifan in 2019. In their semifinal match, they eased to a 6-4, 6-3 win over American No.7 seeds Caroline Dolehide and Desire Krawczyk.
Dabrowski and Routliffe will be contesting their fourth final of the season, and their All England Club performance has been a continuation of the form they’ve showed since reuniting for the grass-court season. (Dabrowski had been off the tour since the Miami Open.) They won the title in Nottingham, and were also runners-up in Eastbourne.