2022 Finalist Jabeur Shocked At US Open After Fighting Mysterious Illness

| by Erik Virostko

2022 US Open finalist Ons Jabeur surprisingly lost already in the fourth round of the 2023 tournament, losing to China's Qinwen Zheng.

After last year's success, the Tunisian certainly had high hopes ahead of the 2023 US Open, but soon, those were dampened by an illness. Jabeur admitted that she had to take a lot of medicine, something that could have prevented her from delivering the best performance on the tennis court.

At this year's US Open, multiple players struggled with a mysterious illness, as Christopher Eubanks had to rush off the court, while Dominic Thiem retired from his match. Jabeur has also been one of the affected players, and the journey of WTA's former world no. 2 ended already in the fourth round of the event.

Taking on the 23rd-seeded Qinwen Zheng, Jabeur knew that she wouldn't be facing an easy task, as the Chinese player beat her last year in Toronto, even though back then, the Tunisian was forced to retire.

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This time around, Zheng played a much better match overall, starting already in the first set. She broke her opponent's serve three times, and while being broken only once, the 23rd seed won the opening set 6-2.

Although Jabeur tried her best to stop her opponent, she couldn't do it. Facing a 2-5 deficit in the second set was too much, and despite recovering one of the breaks, Zhang was just too good, winning the match 6-2, 6-4, and being very excited about her win.

"Right now I feel just super happy and excited to play in a big stadium and have a really good performance today. Ons is a fantastic player, really tough to beat, has lots of variation in her game. That was a really impressive win for me today."

On the other hand, Jabeur can expect to fall in the WTA Rankings. After not defending her last year's finalist points, the Tunisian will drop to at least seventh place, from her previous fifth, with a chance of dropping a couple more positions.

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