Jelena Ostapenko claimed that US Open organisers went back on their word when it came to her match against Coco Gauff. The American thrashed the 20th seed on Tuesday, defeating Ostapenko 6-0 6-2. And the Latvian has now claimed that she was told they would be playing in the night session following her 6am bedtime, only to learn that they were scheduled first in the day session.
Ostapenko’s impressive US Open run came to a dismal end in the quarter-final as she lasted just 68 minutes on court against home favourite Gauff. It came after the Latvian stunned world No 1 Iga Swiatek in the fourth round on Sunday night with the match ending shortly before midnight.
The 26-year-old has now claimed that, immediately after upsetting the reigning champion, she was told that her quarter-final match against Gauff would be played in the night session on Tuesday. But that wasn’t the case, as the pair were scheduled first up at 12pm local time in the heat of the day session.
“I think it’s really hard to recover from those night matches, because after beating world No. 1, I went to sleep at, like, 5:00 in the morning, and still, you sleep for, I don’t know, maybe like seven, eight hours, but you completely don’t recover,” the 2017 French Open champion said after losing to Gauff.
“Yesterday the whole day I felt very low energy. I thought today I was, like, going to wake up and feel better. But honestly, I didn’t really feel much better.” Explaining why she got to sleep so late, Ostapenko continued: “I got back to the hotel around, like, 2:00 a.m. and even 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 just to recover. I think it’s a little bit crazy.” And the Latvian clarified that it was the schedule that she thought was “crazy” after organisers communicated something different to her.
“The thing was that when I asked the day before, I was pretty sure I’m gonna play at night session, because that’s what they told me,” she explained. “When the schedule came out, I saw I’m playing first match and was, like, wow, that’s a little bit strange scheduling.”
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Ostapenko added: “Honestly, I thought at least maybe I play second where I thought our match will be interesting match and they would probably put it as a night session, especially she is from here.
“Yeah, when I saw the schedule I was a little bit surprised, not in a really good way.” The 20th seed also confirmed that it was straight after her match against Swiatek that she was told she would play her quarter-final at night.
But Ostapenko already knew to take the claim with a pinch of salt even before organisers went back on their word. “I mean, you never know with the people who are doing schedule, because sometimes you feel like you better don’t ask anything, because sometimes it’s working your way or sometimes it’s working against you completely. It depends where and how it’s gonna work,” she said.
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