CNN
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Coco Gauff broke down in tears just after her straight sets defeat in the fourth spherical of the Australian Open up on Sunday, although fellow American Jessica Pegula progressed to the quarterfinals.
The 18-year-previous Gauff shed 7-5 6-3 to Latvian Jelena Ostapenko on Margaret Court docket Arena and could not disguise her disappointment when talking to reporters about the match later on.
Requested to demonstrate her frustrations, a tearful Gauff explained: “I consider it’s mainly because I worked definitely tough and I felt genuinely excellent coming into the event and I however feel good. I continue to really feel like I’ve improved a whole lot.
“But when you perform a player like her and she plays seriously very well, it’s like there is nothing you can do.
“So it is a small little bit frustrating on that aspect.”
Gauff was the seventh seed in Melbourne and experienced started out the time promisingly, successful the ASB Vintage in Auckland previously this month for the third WTA singes title of her career.
But Ostapenko held company when it mattered, saving 7 of the eight break details she confronted, while using all three of her prospects on Gauff’s provide.
“I assume each loss is fairly in my management mainly because I do truly feel like I’m a excellent participant, but today she just performed greater,” Gauff included, per Reuters.
“There had been times in the match wherever I was finding discouraged because I commonly can trouble solve but currently I really feel like I did not have significantly solutions to what she was doing.
“There were balls I was hitting deep and she was hitting them on the line and hitting them again deep, like, around and over all over again. It’s just one of these times that just did not go my way and went her way.”
Ostapenko is by way of to the quarterfinals for the 1st time in Melbourne Park and will engage in Elena Rybakina, who defeated women’s planet No. 1 Iga Światek on Sunday.
Previous French Open champion Rybakina, 23, defeated the 21-year-previous 6-4 6-4 on Rod Laver Arena.
Światek was the event favored soon after achieving the semifinals past year and winning eight titles in 2022, such as two grand slams.
“I felt the strain, and I felt that ‘I really don’t want to lose’ rather of ‘I want to win’. So that’s, I believe, a foundation of what I should really emphasis on in (the) up coming few of months,” Światek explained to reporters.
Rybakina, who was born in Russia but has represented Kazakhstan since 2018, received her maiden grand slam title at Wimbledon very last calendar year and the initially for Kazakhstan.
Third seed Pegula is now the best-rated participant still left in the women’s attract immediately after she defeated Czech Barbora Krejcikova 7-5 6-2 in a single hour and 41 minutes.
The 2023 Australian Open runs via January 29 in Melbourne.
