Barbora Strycova loses her temper then loses the match

A FEMALE tennis star lost her mind in a stunning mid-match meltdown during which she slammed the women’s tour as a “circus”.

Barbora Strycova was filthy.

BARBORA Strycova lost her temper before losing the match in the second round of the Wuhan Open in China.

The Czech won the first set comfortably against eighth seed Jelena Ostapenko before falling in three sets 6-2 5-7 3-6, and it was more than just the reigning French Open champion bringing her down.

In steamy conditions the heat rule came into play, resulting in a 10-minute stoppage between the second and third sets. Strycova wasn’t impressed with the delay, keen to carry on, and her frustrations came to the boil after losing the second set in what she thought were dubious circumstances.

Ostapenko spanked a forehand winner down the line to level things up at one set apiece but her 31-year-old opponent wasn’t buying it, claiming the ball was long. But without Hawkeye in play to challenge the call, Strycova’s cries fell on deaf ears.

She raged at the umpire from the baseline while the Latvian took her seat courtside, and continued to argue for a couple of minutes more when she too took a load off before the decider.

Tennis writer Tumaini Carayol tweeted Strycova’s abuse of the umpire which erupted because of the heat rule and what she believed was a poor call.

“You have no f***ing idea what’s going on here. You’re just sitting on the bench, counting the points,” Strycova reportedly said.

Ostapenko broke for 6-5 with a return winner on/near line, Strycova spent half the change of ends yelling towards and then at the umpire.

— Tumaini Carayol (@tumcarayol) September 26, 2017

Strycova has some thoughts on the current heat rule: "The WTA is just a circus. Everybody is gonna laugh about us. It's just a joke."

— Tumaini Carayol (@tumcarayol) September 26, 2017

Strycova never regained her composure and Ostapenko steamrolled her way into the third round. Speaking after the match, the 20-year-old said she was proud of the way she dealt with the challenging conditions.

“It was not amazing to play on a court without Hawkeye. But I’m a fighter. I went out there and showed my best, fought until the end and won the match,” Ostapenko said.

“It was a tough match today because I just arrived from Seoul yesterday, having won the tournament there. Conditions were tough. The heat rule was in force when we played.

“I’m really happy that I was fighting till the end, even though I was down in the second set, and won the match.”

Life was hard for Barbora Strycova.

In other matches, Simona Halep was defeated 6-2 6-1 by Russia’s Daria Kasatkina at a tumultuous tournament that has seen two thirds of the top seeds tumble out in the first two rounds.

The World No. 2 headed for the exit along with Dane Caroline Wozniacki, ranked sixth in the world, who crashed out 5-7 3-6 to Maria Sakkari of Greece.

They followed fellow seeds Johanna Konta, Sloane Stephens, Madison Keys and Petra Kvitova among others, who all suffered surprise defeats earlier in the week.

But it was not all bad news for the sport’s top players as Spaniard Garbine Muguruza, World No. 1, triumphed against Ukrainian Lesia Tsurenko, sailing into the third round with a 6-4 6-4 victory.

Halep begun her second-round match strongly and immediately broke her opponent. But she was later let down by her service game, managing to convert just 12 per cent of her second serves.

The 25-year-old Romanian was competing in her first match since the opening round of the US Open when she lost to Maria Sharapova.

“I didn’t play for a month. It’s tough to come back and to play matches ... Maybe it was a mistake that I didn’t play, but I needed rest after the US season,” she said after the match.

“What I saw after the US Open was that my serve is too soft for the big players, so that’s why I decided to work on it more,” she added.

Simona Halep had no answers against Daria Kasatkina.

Meanwhile Wozniacki, seeded fourth, was upset by Sakkari, ranked 80th in the world, who grabbed her first win over a top 20 player.

The defeat came after Wozniacki, who finished as year-end World No. 1 in 2010 and 2011, won her third Pan Pacific Open in Japan last week, capturing her first title of the year. She had previously lost six finals.

In other matches, Karolina Pliskova triumphed over China’s second-ranked player Zhang Shuai after a tense three-set battle.

The 25-year-old Czech overpowered Zhang 6-4 3-6 6-4 in just over two hours, breaking an unlucky streak for the competition’s top seeds at the China tournament.

Pliskova, seeded three, has never lost a match against Zhang and once again showed she had the measure of her Chinese opponent, who had been on a high after winning the Guangzhou Open last week.

She will now face another home crowd favourite, Wang Qiang, the first-ever Chinese player to reach the third round at Wuhan.

Agnieszka Radwanska, seeded nine, defeated German Julia Gorges 7-5 7-5.

— with AFP