Garbiñe Muguruza bowed out this morning to Ukrainian player Anhelina Kalinina in the Manolo Santana Stadium. It was an encounter in which the Spaniard never really looked comfortable. “It was a strange match, I had chances to stay in touch but I never really settled and she played really well, I was really surprised by her game”.

Muguruza looked physically hampered in the second set, when she had to retire to the locker room, from which she returned with a bandage on her right calf. “I felt a slight pain in my right calf, and I wanted to bandage it as a precaution and I’ll speak to my team to see if I need to do any tests”, she explained. The Spaniard will have a few more days to recover before the WTA in Rome, but right now, she does not want to risk missing the French Open.

Garbiñe was disappointed not to have claimed another win on the Manolo Santana court at this year’s Mutua Madrid Open: “Whenever I come here, it’s like ‘let’s see if this year I can finally relax, control my nerves, control my emotions’. When I was on court, I was very tense and stiff, in the first and second set I didn’t manage to produce the tennis I have in other tournaments. I think it’s a combination of so many expectations, making it a reality, not letting the fans down, not letting everyone who’s here down, and I think that’s affecting me year after year”.

The result means that the Spaniard says goodbye to the twentieth edition of the Mutua Madrid Open without having managed to play her best tennis. Her executioner, Anhelina Kalinina will now play in the last sixteen against the player who saw off her compatriot Marta Kostyuk this afternoon, Briton Emma Raducanu.