Second match, second defeat: French Open winner Jelena Ostapenko also failed early in Sydney and messed up her dress rehearsal for the Australian Open.
It should be a good omen: In her off-season Ostapenko tried her hand as a pilot in an Air Baltic simulator. The 20-year-old didn’t show much shyness when flying high in the cockpit of a Boeing 737 when handling the instrument collection. After the first two tournaments of the new year, however, the Latvian has finally landed on the ground of reality. In Sydney she was beaten by left-hander Jekaterina Makarova (Russia) 6:7 (3:7), 1:6.
It was Ostapenko’s second opener after she had also dropped out a few days earlier in Shenzhen. In 2018, she is still waiting for her first success at a WTA event. Against the experienced Makarova, the seventh place in the world rankings made eleven double errors – three of them already in their first service game. Two foot faults at the beginning of the race documented the uncertainty.
The false start comes as a surprise, as Ostapenko had gone into the season so confidently. She hired the Australian David Taylor, who was also responsible for Samantha Stosur and Ana Ivanovic, as the new coach. OstaPENGko “, the power player from Riga, has a small sense of achievement to report, but nevertheless. In a show fight in Abu Dhabi she had beaten Serena Williams in three sets at the end of the year. However, the former number one from the USA only four months after the birth of daughter Alexis Olympia was understandably still a long way from her old form.