Jelena Ostapenko retired in her Canadian Open second-round match against Shuai Zhang while trailing 6-0, 4-0, then turned her phone on the abuse waiting for her after the loss. Within minutes, she had posted screenshots on Instagram showing messages she said followed one of the worst days she has had on court.
The 29-year-old said professional sport can leave athletes dealing with very bad days when they are not well health-wise, and that this is what they face after almost every loss. She pointed to tennis-related abuse, fat-shaming and life-threatening comments, and asked Instagram to do something about the toxic profile she named.
The retirement came after a medical timeout, closing out a match that had already gone badly. Zhang had taken control from the start, and Ostapenko never found a way back before stopping after 33 minutes, having faced 14 break points and held serve in only one of five service games. The result fit a difficult Canadian Open record too: she has never made it past the third round in 10 attempts.
What makes the episode harder to dismiss is the gap between what Ostapenko said and what the scoreboard showed. She described not feeling well, but the match had already turned into a one-sided defeat before she retired, leaving the online reaction to land on top of a poor performance rather than a close match gone wrong. That combination — illness, retirement and abuse — is exactly why players keep saying the messages keep coming after losses, and why betting-driven anger is often part of the mix.
Ostapenko is due back on Thursday in doubles alongside Su-Wei Hsieh against Donna Vekic and Maria Sakkari, a quick return after a day that ended with screenshots instead of celebration. Earlier this year, Ostapenko and Hsieh reached the Qatar Open final, and a month before the Canadian Open she won the mixed doubles title at Wimbledon. For now, though, the larger story is not the next match. It is that a retirement on court was followed almost immediately by a flood of abuse off it, and she is asking the platform to act before the next player gets the same treatment.
