Sore loser Jelena Ostapenko was booed off court at Wimbledon and claimed opponent Tatjana Maria was “lucky” after her fourth-round defeat.
Latvian Ostapenko, a former French Open champion, threw a water bottle at her chair which fell over as she stormed away following a 5-7 7-5 7-5 loss in which she wasted two match points.
She said: “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.”
The Court One crowd were unimpressed by Ostapenko’s bad-tempered exit and made their feelings clear.
“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.”
Maria, a 34-year-old mother-of-two from Germany, reached her first grand slam quarter-final.
She said: “I’m now in the quarter-final of Wimbledon, so it’s really amazing for me. This means also that you always have to keep going.
“It doesn’t matter how old you are, doesn’t matter how many kids you have, you just have to keep going and to believe in yourself.”
