Barbora Strycova calls women's tennis 'a joke' after Wuhan Open loss

World No. 25 Barbora Strycova lost her cool before falling to eighth seed Jelena Ostapenko in the second round of the Wuhan Open in China on Wednesday. After her 6-2 5-7 3-6 defeat, the Czech blasted the women's tennis circuit before calling the WTA "a circus and just a joke."

Ostapenko, the reigning French Open champion, was overpowered in the first set before a ten-minute stoppage between the second and third sets left Strycova feeling uneasy and frustrated. The delay, caused due to steamy conditions, gave Ostapenko the decisive advantage in the third set, which she won comfortably.

According to several onlookers, the 31-year-old Strycova complained about several calls before fuming at the umpire from the baseline for a few minutes before the third set. Although she wasn't slapped with a penalty, Strycova continued to remain vocal and didn't refrain from voicing her grievances after the match.

Barbora Strycova lashes out at chair umpire, WTA

After the match, tennis writer Tumaini Carayol tweeted that Strycova yelled out: “You have no f***ing idea what’s going on here. You’re just sitting on the bench, counting the points" to the chair umpire because of the heat rule and what she believed was the wrong call.

Carayol also tweeted Strycova's thoughts on the current heat rule (see below): "The WTA is just a circus. Everybody is going to laugh about us. It's just a joke."

Meanwhile, 20-year-old Ostapenko acknowledged that the heat rule benefitted her. “It was not amazing to play on a court without Hawkeye. But I’m a fighter. I went out there and showed my best, fought until the end and won the match. It was a tough match today because I just arrived from Seoul yesterday, having won the tournament there. Conditions were tough. The heat rule was in force when we played. I’m really happy that I was fighting till the end, even though I was down in the second set, and won the match.”

The Wuhan Open has already witnessed a lot of upsets. After World No. 2 Simona Halep lost 6-2, 6-1 to Russia’s Daria Kasatkina, World No. 6 Caroline Wozniacki had no answer for Maria Sakkari of Greece. Halep and Wozniacki joined fellow top seeds Sloane Stephens, Johanna Konta, Madison Keys and Petra Kvitova, among others, who all suffered shocking early defeats in the tournament.