FORT WORTH, Texas -- No.2 seeds Gabriela Dabrowski and Giuliana Olmos came back from the brink to keep their hopes alive of qualifying for the semifinals, saving one match point to defeat Lyudmyla Kichenok and Jelena Ostapenko 7-6(5), 2-6, 12-10. The victory improved Dabrowski and Olmos' record in the Pam Shriver Group to 1-1 and dropped Kichenok and Ostapenko to 0-2.
"We lost our first match, but for us to be able to bounce back and make adjustments is really important," said Olmos. "I'm just really proud of us. We fought really hard today. It was really close. I think we just lost a few deuce points in the second set. It really could have gone either way in the end."
The teams had split their two previous meetings this year, with Dabrowski and Olmos winning en route to their Madrid title and Kichenok and Ostapenko getting quick revenge a few weeks later at Roland Garros.
After splitting the two sets to take the match into a match tiebreak, Kichenok and Ostapenko methodically worked their way back from an early mini-break to level the tiebreak at 8-8. Dabrowski and Olmos missed their first match point chance at 9-8 after Dabrowski punched a backhand volley long.
Two points later, Ostapenko had a chance to close out the win at 10-9 but the Latvian mishit an easy overhead putaway to give the Canadian-Mexican duo a lifeline. Dabrowski and Olmos made no mistake on their second match point, as they closed out the dramatic win on an errant Ostapenko return.
Champions in Madrid and Tokyo, Dabrowski and Olmos are bidding to win their third team title and first WTA Finals. Dabrowski is making her fourth WTA Finals appearance, having qualified from 2017-2019 with Xu Yifan, while Olmos is making her second straight appearance.
Later in the day, No.4 seeds Veronika Kudermetova and Elise Mertens defeated No.7 seeds Anna Danilina and Beatriz Haddad Maia 6-4, 6-3 to stay undefeated and move to the top of the table in the Pam Shriver Group, dropping the recent Guadalajara finalists to 1-1. With the day's results, no team has secured qualification into the semifinals, with all four teams still in the running to advance.
