Mertens suffers from the pectoral muscle.
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Elise Mertens (WTA 17) failed to create the feat against Japan’s Naomi Osaka, second player in the world, Monday in Miami.
In the round of 16 of this WTA 1000 tournament, a hard-surface event with $ 3,260,190, Osaka won 6-3, 6-3 after 1 hour and 28 minutes of play.
This fourth duel between the two players turned largely to the advantage of Osaka, victorious in two of the three previous clashes, at the start of the meeting. The 23-year-old Japanese took Mertens’ serve straight away, even making a shutout, and led 3-0 after just 8 minutes.
After losing her serve again to being down 5-1, Mertens, 25, was showing she wasn’t going to be beaten so easily. She made the break (5-2) then saved four set points on her serve to return to 5-3. In the next game, she dismissed three more set points, but eventually gave in, Osaka winning the set 6-3.
In the second set, Mertens inherited a break point to lead 0-2, but Osaka came out. In the next game, the Belgian No. 1 fought off five break points before leaving the Australian Open winner to 2-1. But Mertens counterbreaked in stride.
After moving to 2-3, Mertens was asking for a medical time out to treat his right shoulder. On her return, she saw Osaka come back in front (4-3), after two shutouts. In all Mertens, visibly embarrassed in the shoulder, conceded eleven points in a row, letting her opponent slip away at 5-3. A fault by Mertens ended the game (6-3).
For the first quarterfinal of her career in Miami, Osaka will face American Jessica Pegula (WTA 33) or Greece’s Maria Sakkari (WTA 25). Osaka could leave Florida as world number 1. For that, she must win and Ashleigh Barty, current queen of the circuit and title holder (2019), must not reach the final.
Mertens was eliminated in the first round of the doubles with Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka.
Mertens injured in the pectoral muscle: “I don’t think it’s a tear”
The ATP-WTA tournament in Miami will therefore continue without Belgians. But more than this defeat against the best player of the moment, it was above all the resurgence of the injury to the right pectoral muscle of the Limburg woman that was the subject of discussion after the match.
“I don’t know exactly what I’m suffering from yet, but I don’t think it’s a tear,” she explained. “Besides, I am not in pain as I speak to you. I don’t think there is any inflammation as well. I rather believe that it is an overload of this pectoral muscle. The balls, when they are new here in Miami, are very hard. It’s all little things that play out. From now on, it will mainly be a question of recovering well and of taking care of oneself in order to be ready for the next week. I am indeed registered for the tournament on clay in Charleston and the objective is to participate ”.
In the meantime, this is already the third time since the start of the year that Elise Mertens’ shoulder, or right pectoral muscle, has caused him concern. The Belgian n ° 1 had already had to withdraw from the Abu Dhabi tournament at the beginning of January, before giving up aligning in Adelaide, the day after the Australian Open, for the same reasons.
“I haven’t really played an injury-free tournament yet this year,” she said. “At the Australian Open, it went more or less well, but in Dubai, I had to wait for my last match (Editor’s note: against the Spanish Muguruza) to play completely painlessly. On the other hand, I manage to get past it. Sometimes it is also a mental question. I actually think the muscles are very tight. Other than shoulder care and exercises, there isn’t much you can do. Otherwise, it certainly wasn’t a bad week. Even though there were ups and downs, like yesterday against Kontaveit, I had never reached the knockout stages in Miami. I will try to keep the good things in mind. And I look forward to playing on clay ».
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