Two-time champion Naomi Osaka has withdrawn from this yr’s Australian Open simply eight days earlier than the beginning of the event.
Osaka, a winner in Melbourne in 2019 and 2021, has not performed on the WTA Tour since September and has slipped to 42 on the planet rankings.
No motive was given for the 25-year-old Japanese participant’s withdrawal.
Organisers have promoted Ukraine’s Dayana Yastremska to the principle attract her place.
Quite a lot of star names, together with 42-year-old seven-time Grand Slam champion Venus Williams, and Spain’s world primary Carlos Alcaraz, 19, have already withdrawn from the event which begins on 16 January in Melbourne.
It stays to be seen whether or not British primary Emma Raducanu will compete on the Australian Open after she rolled her ankle on the ASB Traditional on Thursday and was pressured to stop halfway by means of a match.
4-time Grand Slam champion Osaka retired from her second-round match as she defended the Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo in September.
She had been overwhelmed within the first spherical of three tournaments together with the US Open, previous to the Tokyo occasion. She additionally misplaced within the first spherical of the French Open in Might and withdrew from Wimbledon in June due to an Achilles tendon harm, and reached the third spherical eventually yr’s Australian Open.
In Might 2021, Osaka pulled out of the French Open after revealing she had “suffered lengthy bouts of melancholy” since successful her first Grand Slam title in 2018, and in September of that yr she introduced she would take a break from the game.
