Seeded 16th in the tournament, Ostapenko, who occupies the 17th position in the WTA ranking, lost 3-6, 6-7 (6:8) to the 294th ranked Belinda Bencic from Switzerland in the first round match.
Ostapenko started the match with a won game on the opponent’s serve, but in the very next game, Bencic equalized. In the continuation of the first set, the Swiss won all her service games, and in the eighth game she was superior on Ostapenko’s serve, ending the set with 6-3.
At the beginning of the second set, Benčiča reached 3-1, to which the Latvian tennis player responded with two consecutively won games, being able to level the score. In the seventh game, Ostapenko did not hold her serve, after which Bencic won her service game to make it 5-3. In the ninth game, Ostapenko won all the games and got closer to 4-5, but in the tenth game, the Latvian won five match points and reached 5-5 with the third break point.
In the next two games, the players won their service games, but in the tiebreak, Ostapenko did not use two set points and lost to the Swiss woman, who once ranked fourth in the WTA, 6:8.
Up until now, both tennis players had won once in their mutual matches. In the 1/32 finals of the 2018 Indian Wells tournament, Ostapenko was superior in three sets to the USA, but in the second round of the 2020 Australian Open, the Swiss took revenge with 7-5, 7-5.
Both tennis players participated in the Adelaide “WTA 500” tournament before going to Melbourne, where they lost in the second round matches. It is true that Benčić played in the qualification even before that.
Last year, Ostapenko reached the third round in singles and the final in doubles. The best singles achievement for a Latvian tennis player in the Australian Masters is the quarter-final reached in 2023, but Benčiča has reached the fourth round twice.
For participating in the tournament, Ostapenko earned ten WTA ranking points.
In the second round, Bencic will have to meet Suzanne Lamans from the Netherlands (WTA 77).
It has already been announced that the second racket of Latvian tennis, Darja Semenistaja, lost in the match of the first round of the tournament qualification, earning two WTA ranking points.
The main tournament of the Australian Open Championship on hard surfaces will take place from January 12 to 26.