Naomi Osaka has apologised for “disrespecting” Sorana Cirstea in her post-match on-court interview after she received a frosty handshake and a telling-off from the Romanian.<\/p>\n
After wrapping up a 6-3 4-6 6-2 win against Cirstea in the Australian Open second round, a smiling Osaka made her way to the net to carry out the post-match formalities.<\/p>\n
But Cirstea gave a brief handshake before exchanging some words with the Japanese 16th seed by the umpire’s chair.<\/p>\n
Asked in her on-court interview what it took to get past Cirstea, Osaka said: “Apparently a lot of ‘come ons’ that she was angry about.”<\/p>\n
The interviewer then asked if Cirstea was complaining because she could hear Osaka trying to pump herself up between the Romanian’s first and second serves.<\/p>\n
“I think so, but like, she could have asked me. I’m sorry,” former world number one Osaka replied.<\/p>\n
“She’s a great player. I think this was her last Australian Open, so sorry she was mad about it.”<\/p>\n
In a later news conference, Osaka apologised for some of her post-match comments towards Cirstea, who is retiring from tennis at the end of the 2026 season after 20 years on the WTA Tour.<\/p>\n
“I’m a little confused. I guess that emotions were very high for her. I also want to apologise,” the four-time major winner said.<\/p>\n
“I think the first couple of things that I said on the court were disrespectful. I don’t like disrespecting people. That’s not what I do.”<\/p>\n
However, Cirstea said there was “no drama” between herself and Osaka.<\/p>\n
“It was just a five-second exchange between two players that have been on a tour for a long time. It stays between us,” Cirstea, 35, said.<\/p>\n
“Look, this is my last Australian Open. I have been playing for 20 years. It’s more going on than a five-second discussion at the end that I had with Naomi.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Naomi Osaka has apologised for “disrespecting” Sorana Cirstea in her post-match on-court interview after she received a frosty…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":422924,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-422923","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=422923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422923\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/422924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}