Ostapenko Expresses Disappointment In 'Crazy' US Open Scheduling After Defeat

Tuesday, 05 September 2023 at 23:22

byJake Davies

Jelena Ostapenko questioned the US Open scheduling after suffering defeat in her US Open quarter-final to Coco Gauff.

Since surprising the world by winning the 2017 French Open, Ostapenko's results and level has been quite unpredictable to track. Often, we do not know when she is going to catch fire, and that was just the case when she knocked out No.1 seed Iga Swiatek in the fourth round.

Perhaps staying true to her game, Ostapenko was miles from her best in the following match, making a lot of early errors in rally and being far too erratic against someone that plays as solid from the ground as Coco Gauff does.

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As much as the drastic dip in level was always going to be on the cards, Ostapenko talked through her reasons behind her performance, and had a few things to say about the crazy scheduling between matches.

"I didn't really feel physically very tired, but I felt like I didn't really recover from that night. Because as I said, I got back to the hotel around, like, 2am and I tried to go to sleep at 3:00 in the morning, but I had all this adrenaline and it was impossible to fall asleep. Then when you go to sleep at 5:00 or 6:00 in the morning, the whole day where you need a few days to recover, I think it is a little bit crazy."

The Latvian went into greater detail about her feelings about the not-so-ideal short turnaround.

"I think it was better for her the schedule, because obviously she played much earlier in the day I played night session. Honestly, I thought maybe at least I would play second where I thought our match would be an interesting match. Yeah, when I saw the schedule I was a little bit surprised, not in a really good way."