Photo: Pascal Ratthé
Talk about a successful reunion. Playing their first tournament together since last summer, Ottawa’s Gabriela Dabrowski and her Brazilian partner Luisa Stefani took home the doubles title at the Chennai Open in India on Sunday, a WTA 250 event.
Seeded first in the draw, the pair rolled through their competition. They did not drop a set all week and never lost more than four games in any set. In the final, they defeated Anna Blinkova and Natela Dzalamidze 6-1, 6-2 to capture the trophy. The win is Dabrowski’s second title of the season after claiming top honours at the WTA 1000 clay court event in Madrid this spring with Giuliana Olmos of Mexico, her regular partner in 2022. She has now won 12 WTA doubles titles in her career to go along with her two Grand Slam mixed doubles crowns from the 2018 Australian Open and Roland Garros in 2017.
Stefani missed an entire year of competition as the result of a gruesome knee injury that she suffered while playing the semifinals the U.S. Open with Dabrowski last year. In 2021, the duo was victorious at the National Bank Open presented by Rogers in Montreal and reached three other finals in Madrid, San Jose, and Cincinnati. They also qualified for the prestigious WTA Finals but were unable to play due to Stefani’s injury.
Dabrowski will be teaming up with Olmos at the Toray Pan Pacific Open, a WTA 500 event in Tokyo this week. As the bad luck of the draw would have it, the second-seeded team will face Stefani and Japan’s Ena Shibahara in the opening round.
