Easily one of the best and most exciting tennis tournaments on the men’s and women’s yearly calendar is the Indian Wells Masters, also known as Indian Wells Open and BNP Paribas Open for sponsorship reasons. The current edition is taking place in California and we’re seeing some really good tennis taking place in both the men’s and women’s tournaments.
As we tuned in this morning, there was a really good game taking place between Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova and Japan’s Naomi Osaka. The latter is easily one of the best women’s players on tour going around right now but she’s been struggling in recent months, with both physical and mental fitness. This morning, she crashed out early in the tournament.
Naomi Osaka loses in 2022 Indian Wells
While she’s yet to find her groove and her rhythm, Osaka was still expected to do better than she did at the 2022 Indian Wells, where she lost in just Round 2 today. She was overpowered by the 24-year old Kudermetova and the latter deserved every point she won on the court. Eventually, it was an easy win as she beat Osaka 6-0, 6-4.
The first set was an extremely poor one for Osaka’s standards and the 4-time grand slam winner would’ve still been expected to turn the game around in the second set. She fought well and brought a much better game in the second set but her opponent wasn’t letting anything get by her.
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Osaka began as a wildcard entrant in this tournament while her opponent is the number #21 seed in the WTA 2022 Indian Wells. At the start of the game today, there were some chants and shouts made from the crowd against Osaka which led the latter to crying on the court. This happened just a few minutes into the game and that was one of the main reasons she lost the opening set 0-6.
We’re still unsure of what was said but we know that it ended up hurting Osaka and that was weighing on her head right through the game. In fact, she even approached the chair umpire and requested for the people involved to be escorted out of the court, but it didn’t happen. She further went on to ask the chair umpire for her mic, so that she could reply to the miscreant.
Osaka was later pictured crying at the side of the court and it’s difficult to play a high-level tennis match when you’re not in the best mental state. We’re not sure of what was said but the pictures weren’t very good and we think the organisers need to look into this and find a way to avoid such situations for the rest of the tournament. Take a look:
Naomi Osaka asking chair umpire if she can borrow umpires mic to talk to the woman in the crowd. And her convo with supervisor. Naomi was crying #IndianWells pic.twitter.com/lehS7qi8EZ
— NoFirstName claycourtdal (@SMSTNS) March 13, 2022
After the game, Osaka requested to say a few words on the microphone, which is not what the loser usually does. The crowd yelled for her and all she had to say to the crowd was “Thank you.” She mentioned how she’s seen the Williams sisters being heckled at this venue and now it as her turn. See her break down after the game:
Naomi Osaka asked for the microphone after her loss against Veronika Kudermetova. Here's what she said. pic.twitter.com/0Pj9WnNe4t
— The Tennis Letter (@TheTennisLetter) March 13, 2022
Harassing black athletes is not something that should be tolerated in this sport and we don’t condone it. For more updates from the 2022 Indian Wells tournament as well as other tennis updates from around the world, remember to always stay tuned to ReadScoops.com…
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