At a glance

• 9th seed: Aldila Sutjiadi/Erin Routliffe's ranking at US Open 2026
• 75.3%: their first-serve success rate in the round-of-16 win
• 6-2, 4-6, 6-2: the scoreline that got them into the quarterfinal
• 1st time: Aldila's first-ever Grand Slam doubles quarterfinal

Three sets, one deuce that felt like it lasted an hour, and a scoreboard that kept flipping  that's what it took for Aldila Sutjiadi to reach a place she'd never been before.

Aldila Sutjiadi, Indonesia's top-ranked women's doubles player, and her partner Erin Routliffe of New Zealand reached the quarterfinals of the 2026 US Open women's doubles draw, the furthest Aldila has ever advanced at a Grand Slam. The pair, seeded ninth, beat Hungarian-Ukrainian duo Anna Bondar and Anhelina Kalinina 6-2, 4-6, 6-2 in the round of 16 on Monday, September 7, at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in New York. Two days later, on Wednesday, September 9, their run ended against American pair Ashlyn Krueger and Robin Montgomery, 7-6(5), 6-3.

The round-of-16 win was the kind of match that swings on small margins. Aldila and Routliffe opened aggressively, breaking early to take the first set 6-2. Bondar and Kalinina regrouped and leveled things at 4-4 before snatching Aldila's serve to close out the second set 6-4. In the decider, Aldila and Routliffe reasserted control, closing it out 6-2. Their first-serve numbers told the story: a 75.3% first-serve success rate, with 73.4% of those points won, according to WTA data.

For Aldila, this was uncharted territory. Her best previous Grand Slam doubles result was the round of 16  a mark she'd hit four separate times, at the 2023 Australian Open, 2023 French Open, the 2023 and 2024 editions of Wimbledon, and the 2023 US Open. Getting past that barrier, in New York, on the biggest stage in American tennis, meant something.

"Aku akan fokus match by match," Aldila told Antara News after the win, reflecting on where she stood in the draw.

The quarterfinal itself was tighter than the scoreline suggests. Aldila and Routliffe traded games with Krueger and Montgomery through a tense first set that reached 40-40 late, forcing a decisive game before the Americans edged ahead 5-4 and eventually closed out the tiebreak. The second set went to the home pair 6-3, ending Aldila and Routliffe's run at the final eight.

Krueger and Montgomery had themselves looked sharp getting there, dismissing German-Turkish pair Tatjana Maria and Zeynep Sonmez 6-3, 6-2 in the previous round.

 

 

 

 

 

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There's a detail here that surprises casual tennis fans: doubles results rarely make front-page news in Indonesian sports media, yet this one did  because no Indonesian player, man or woman, had reached a Grand Slam doubles quarterfinal in this current tennis generation. The crowd noise at Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, the squeak of sneakers on hard court, the rhythm of a deuce that just won't resolve  that's the texture of what a career-best week actually sounds like, even when it ends one round short of the semifinal.