Twice Australian Open champion Naomi Osaka has pulled out of the Grand Slam ahead of her scheduled third round match on Saturday due to an abdominal injury.<\/p>\n
Her opponent, Australian Maddison Inglis, has a walkover into the fourth round.<\/p>\n
Japanese 16th seed Osaka, the 2019 and 2021 winner at Melbourne Park, said on social media that her body needed attention following her previous match against Sorana Cirstea.<\/p>\n
She later said at the tournament she had been carrying the injury and had hoped to play through the pain.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought maybe if I gave myself a break before my match today, I would be able to handle it, but I warmed up, and it got a lot worse,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI definitely have to do more tests, and obviously I think coming back from pregnancy, my body changed quite a lot. So this is something I have to be really cautious of.\u201d<\/p>\n
The pull-out is a setback for Osaka, who has been returning to her best and made the US Open semi-finals last year.<\/p>\n
At Melbourne Park, Osaka made a huge splash before her opening match against Antonia Ruzic when she entered Rod Laver Arena in a jellyfish-inspired outfit, one of the boldest fashion statements seen at a Grand Slam.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously it was nice that everyone enjoyed my outfit, but also, I enjoyed playing the tennis here. I played two three-set matches, and I felt really physically healthy.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, I guess, not my (abdomen), but just fitness-wise it felt really good.\u201d<\/p>\n
–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":15758,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-22852","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Her opponent, Australian Maddison Inglis, has a walkover into the fourth round.","published_date":null,"news_description":"Her opponent, Australian Maddison Inglis, has a walkover into the fourth round.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/22852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/22852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26011,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/22852\/revisions\/26011"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=22852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}