As Camila Osorio hugged Ons Jabeur at the net following their match on Tuesday, she almost looked as if she were holding Jabeur upright. Jabeur was exhausted and drained, sweat saturating her tennis uniform. She had managed to defeat Osorio, 7-5, 7-6 (4), but she was so weary and wobbly that Osorio asked her if she was OK.
“I told her, ‘Not really,’” Jabeur, a Tunisian seeded fifth in singles, said in an on-court interview following her first-round victory at the U.S. Open.
Jabeur reached the final at this tournament last year and is a sentimental favorite of tennis fans worldwide.