Having lost five match points at the end of the second set, Alona Ostapenko could not save herself in the first round of the Australian Open against new mother Belinda Bencic. With a loss of 3-6, 6-7 (6:8), Latvia’s leading tennis player started and finished the season’s first Grand Slam singles tournament, but as one of the main favorites, together with Taiwan’s Suwei Hsieh, she will also participate in the doubles competition, where both competed in the finals a year ago.
Ostapenko was seeded 16th in Melbourne, but that did not help her avoid a difficult draw in the first round. Although the 2021 Tokyo Olympics champion and former world number four Bencic is currently ranked only 294th, this is due to her return to the court after a maternity break. The 27-year-old Swiss tennis player already proved her strength in the previous tournament in Adelaide, where she reached the round of 16, beating the 14th ranked Anna Kalinska on the way there.
The course of the first set of the match was determined by the accuracy of the serve. Although Ostapenko tried to attack much more aggressively, her accuracy was disappointing and less than half of her serves hit the court on the first attempt, while Bencic was accurate on more than three-quarters of her first serve attempts, so she took the initiative and got break point opportunities much more often. The tennis players exchanged breaks at the beginning of the set, but Alona failed to respond to Bencic’s second break point.
Read the whole article in newspapers Day in the issue of Tuesday, January 14! If you want to continue reading the newspaper in printed form, you can subscribe to it+