Naomi Osaka’s defense of her US Open championship ended on Friday and her immediate future on the women’s professional tennis tour is in doubt after a shocking third-round defeat to the unseeded Leylah Fernandez, a Canadian teenager ranked 74th in the world.
The third-seeded Osaka, a four-time major champion and the best hardcourt player in the world by some distance, lost her composure while serving for the match, came apart during the ensuing tiebreaker and could not right the ship in the third set during a 5-7, 6-7 (2/7), 6-4 loss in 2 hours, 4 minutes.
“I feel like for me recently, like, when I win I don’t feel happy,” Osaka said afterward in an emotional session with the media. “I feel more like a relief. And then when I lose, I feel very sad. I don’t think that’s normal. I didn’t really want to cry, but basically I feel like...”
Photo: Jerry Lai-USA TODAY
At that point the moderator intervened to end the news conference before Osaka insisted on finishing her response while attempting to hold back tears.
“Basically I feel like I’m kind of at this point where I’m trying to figure out what I want to do, and I honestly don’t know when I’m going to play my next tennis match, but I think I’m going to take a break from playing for a while,” she said.
Earlier amid a crackling atmosphere inside Arthur Ashe Stadium, the typically ice-cold Osaka had uncharacteristically hurled her racket to the court on two straight points while dropping the first five of a second-set tiebreaker, drawing rare boos for one of the tournament’s best-liked players since her breakthrough win over Serena Williams in the 2018 US Open final.
Photo: AFP
After leaving the court with a white towel draped over her head between sets without informing chair umpire Alison Hughes, Osaka was promptly broken on her serve to open the third, then received a code violation for firing a ball into the stands as Fernandez consolidated the break for 2-0.
The rollicking near-capacity crowd in the world’s biggest tennis stadium did not so much turn against Osaka as throw itself behind the 18-year-old underdog, who proceeded to breeze through one confident service game after another.
“In the second set, I guess on the very last game, I found the solution to the problem of returning her serve,” Fernandez said. “I’m glad that I found it. From then on I was just fighting, using the crowd’s energy, putting the ball back in as much as I can, just be offensive and go for my shots.”
Osaka, the reigning US Open and Australian Open champion who entered Friday’s prime-time match on a run of 16 straight wins at the major tournaments after skipping Roland Garros and Wimbledon, struggled to get on top of the rallies in her return games as Fernandez coaxed errors out of her imploding foe and coolly served her way to the finish line and her first-ever win at a grand slam against an opponent ranked in the top 20.
The Montreal-born Fernandez, who turns 19 on Monday and is one of only two teenagers remaining in the women’s draw, absorbed Osaka’s pace extremely well in the championship rounds and punctuated each big point with animated fist-pumps to her box and appeals to the Ashe masses for more noise.
She earned a fourth-round match against Angelique Kerber, who defeated Sloane Stephens of the US 5-7, 6-2, 6-3.
Other winners in the women’s singles were Garbine Muguruza, Barbora Krejcikova, Elise Mertens and Aryna Sabalenka.
Fernandez said she was inspired by another teen at the tournament.
Greek third seed Stefanos Tsitsipas earlier was ousted by 18-year-old Spanish player Carlos Alcaraz 6-3, 4-6, 7-6 (7/2), 0-6, 7-6 (7/5) in the men’s draw.
“Honestly the Alcaraz match gave me motivation and gave me the energy to do the same,” Fernandez said. “I saw his match and I saw the way he won and I’m like ‘I’m going to do that next now.’”
Other third-round winners in the men’s draw were: Peter Gojowczyk, Daniil Medvedev, Daniel Evans, Diego Schwartzman, Botic van de Zandschulp, Felix Auger-Aliassime and Frances Tiafoe.
In the mixed doubles, Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching exited after she and Kiwi partner Michael Venus were defeated 4-6, 6-3, 7-10 by France’s Chan Fabrice Martin and Yaroslava Shvedova of Kazakhstan.
Additional reporting by AFP
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