Without naming Townsend, Latvian Ostapenko wrote on Instagram: “Hi all – I wanted to apologise for some of the things I said during my second-round singles match. <\/p>\n
“English is not my native language, so when I said education I was speaking only about what I believe as tennis etiquette. But I understand how the words used could have offended many people beyond the tennis court. <\/p>\n
“I appreciate the support as I continue to learn and grow as a person and a tennis player. Goodbye New York and I look forward to being back next year.”<\/p>\n
The incident occurred at the end of the match when the two players met to shake hands.<\/p>\n
Ostapenko, 28, confronted Townsend for not apologising for a net cord, which had occurred during the first set, then accused the American of having “no education”. <\/p>\n
On-court microphones picked up 29-year-old Townsend telling Ostapenko to “take the L [loss]”.<\/p>\n
Townsend, the world number one doubles player, then whipped the crowd into a frenzy by celebrating with them wildly.<\/p>\n
Boos rang around Court 11 as Ostapenko departed.<\/p>\n
Ostapenko, who described Townsend as “disrespectful” on Instagram after the match, posted later on Wednesday to deny accusations of racism.<\/p>\n
“I was never racist in my life,” she wrote.<\/p>\n
“I respect all nations of people in the world, for me it doesn’t matter where you come from.”<\/p>\n
Ostapenko’s US Open came to an end on Thursday, when she lost a doubles match with Barbora Krejcikova.<\/p>\n
She failed to fulfil media duties afterwards, citing medical issues. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Without naming Townsend, Latvian Ostapenko wrote on Instagram: “Hi all – I wanted to apologise for some of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":103784,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-103783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103783"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103783\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}