Jelena Ostapenko was having a hard time accepting her Wimbledon exit as she thought Tatjana Maria was lucky and that she should have finished on the winning side. 12th-seeded Ostapenko appeared to be cruising toward a straight-set win but failed to close out the match as Maria escaped with a shock 5-7 7-5 7-5 win.
Ostapenko missed out on two match points in the 10th game of the second set and in the end paid the ultimate price. “I thought it was my match, I had to win it, and she got just so lucky in some moments so she could come back.
I felt I was the player who had to win this match today. Of course I’m really disappointed because if I lost against an amazing player who just beat me in a great match, but I just lost my match. I just made mistakes. She just collected all my mistakes, unforced errors, and that’s how she won today," Ostapenko said, per Yahoo Sports.
Ostapenko: Annoyed because I was the better player
Ostapenko had a comfortable 7-5 4-1 lead before everything went downhill for her. Ostapenko was the big favorite, had a big lead, so it's understandable why she was so frustrated with herself after the loss.
“I mean, it’s always annoying to lose such a match, especially when you know you were a better player and you were a favourite in this match,” she added. “So of course I had emotion. I’m a human, and it’s normal.
I’m not going to let it go and say, ‘it’s fine, I lost, and it’s fine’. No, it’s not fine. Obviously I’m an emotional player. I hate losing, as I said before, because I’m such a competitive person.
So I think it’s normal. I mean, of course maybe I shouldn’t have done this, but it’s easy to say from the outside, when you are not on my place, it’s easy to judge”.