World number three Naomi Osaka and two-time Australian Open champion Victoria Azarenka pulled out of the Australian Open warm-up tournaments on Saturday.<\/p>\n
The US Open champion and 2019 Australian Open winner Naomi Osaka of Japan was set to play Elise Mertens in the Gippsland Trophy semi-final but withdrew.<\/p>\n
Osaka looked in fine form as she defeated Irina-Camelia Begu 7-5, 6-1 in a 76-minute match on Friday night.<\/p>\n
\u201cSorry to Tennis Australia and the fans to have to withdraw today,\u201d she said on the WTA\u2019s Twitter account. \u201cI have a niggling injury and in light of the AO on the horizon, I need to be cautious. I look forward to competing next week.\u201d<\/p>\n
Osaka joined Williams with a late withdrawal after the American pulled out of her semi-final clash against world number one Ashleigh Barty with a shoulder injury on Friday.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, two-time major winner Azarenka also had a casualty on Saturday and opted not to play her quarter-final clash against Anett Kontaveit at the Grampians Trophy due to a lower-back injury.<\/p>\n
While Williams and Osaka\u2019s withdrawal were precautionary, there might be more concern over Simona Halep\u2019s fitness.<\/p>\n
The world number two was defeated by Alexandrova 6-2, 6-1 in the Gippsland Trophy quarter-finals, where she appeared hampered by her lower-back injury.<\/p>\n
Halep put on a back brace after calling for medical attention after the first set, in a one-sided contest lasting just for an hour.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
World number three Naomi Osaka and two-time Australian Open champion Victoria Azarenka pulled out of the Australian Open warm-up tournaments\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":138,"featured_media":37756,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[689,615,269,1419,202,1373],"class_list":["post-17007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","tag-australian-open","tag-naomi-osaka","tag-serena-williams","tag-simona-halep","tag-tennis","tag-victoria-azarenka"],"reading_time":"2 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/138"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17007\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}