July 27, 2021 at 10:57AMAmy Gunia
Naomi Osaka was knocked out of the women’s singles tennis at the Tokyo Olympics on Tuesday when she suffered a surprise defeat in the third round of competition to Marketa Vondrousova of the Czech Republic.
Vondrousova, the 2019 French Open runner-up, is ranked no. 42 in the world. She beat Osaka, who is ranked no. 2, in just 1 hour and 8 minutes of play. That makes Vondrousova the first player to move through to the quarter-finals.
Vondrousova beat Osaka 6-1, 6-4 in the third round of competition at the Ariake Tennis Park. The roof was closed on Tuesday due to rain from the incoming Tropical Storm Nepartak.
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Osaka, 23, easily won her first two rounds of competition after taking a two-month mental health break, missing both the French Open and Wimbledon. On Saturday, she defeated Zheng Saisai of China. She beat No. 49-ranked Viktorija Golubic of Switzerland in the second round on Monday.
Osaka, who is the world’s highest-paid female athlete, was fined by French Open officials in May after she announced that she was going to skip post-match press conferences to protect her mental health. She later withdrew from the tournament altogether, citing anxiety and wanting to exercise self-care—a move that kicked off discussion about the importance of mental health, both in sports and more generally. “It’s O.K. to not be O.K.,” Osaka wrote in a recent cover essay for TIME.
READ MORE: Naomi Osaka: ‘It’s O.K. Not to Be O.K.’
The tennis star, who was born in Japan to a Japanese mother and Haitian father, was representing Japan in this year’s Olympics. She lit the Olympic cauldron at the Tokyo 2020 Opening Ceremony on Friday.
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