Ons Jabeur continued her struggles this year by losing yet another match, this time around to Lesia Tsurenko at the 2024 Qatar Open in Doha.
The Tunisian generally played really solid tennis in the Middle East, but it's not working out this year. She is generally having a terrible year overall without any sort of major wins.
The Australian Open campaign didn't go that well for her, as she lost early. Then she played at the Abu Dhabi Open last week but was also beaten pretty easily. Now, she lost early in Doha as well, which only leaves the next Dubai Championships as a potential tournament where things could go better.
Jabeur is clearly lacking confidence, which is the worst possible thing for her because much of what she does well is directly tied to confidence. Tsurenko is an attacking player and, as such, pretty hard to play.
Opponents generally need to overwhelm her, and if they don't, they risk getting overwhelmed. That happened in this match, as the Ukranian bested Jabeur in the opening set mostly because she outplayed her from the baseline.
Jabeur made too many mistakes in this one, though the second set didn't offer anything better. The Ukrainian did play really well because it was a competitive match where she had to save a lot of break points herself.
The second set was a bad one for the fourth seed as she didn't serve well, giving a lot of second-serve chances to Tsurenko, and she was pretty strong on that.
On her own serve, Tsurenko mostly prevented her opponent from having any break chances in the second set, which was important because Jabeur pushed a lot toward the end.
In the end, it was another disappointment for the Tunisian, who must figure things out. This season hasn't been going well for her, as she lost also this match 3-6, 2-6.
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