The WTA 500 tournament on grass courts concluded in Bad Homburg, Germany. The Czech tennis player Karolina Muchova emerged as the triumphant winner, defeating the Japanese player Naomi Osaka in the final. However, the spectators were not able to witness a full-fledged fight for the title: the match was interrupted due to a serious injury to her opponent.

The final that never happened

For both participants of the decisive match, this final was supposed to be historic — for the first time in their careers, both Muchova (11th in the world) and Osaka (15th) had reached the decisive match on grass. The Czech started the match aggressively, taking total initiative from the first minutes.

The first set went one way with a score of 6:1 in favor of Muchova. Already during the first game, the Japanese player was forced to take a medical time-out, complaining about problems with her right foot. Osaka's attempt to continue the game failed: playing only one game in the second set (score 1:0 in favor of the Czech), after 46 minutes of play, she decided to withdraw from the match.

Muchova's successes in the 2026 season

This victory is significant for Karolina's personal statistics. She reduced the gap in head-to-head encounters with Naomi — now the score of personal meetings is 4:3 in favor of Osaka (or 3:3 according to classic main draw statistics).

For the 29-year-old Czech, the title in Germany became the second in the current 2026 season. Earlier, in February, she already caused a sensation by becoming the champion of the prestigious "1000" category tournament in Doha on hard courts.

Muchova is demonstrating incredible versatility this year, reaching the final stages on all three types of surfaces:

  • Victory on hard courts in Qatar.
  • Victory on grass in Bad Homburg.
  • Final on clay in Stuttgart.

Thanks to this success, the Czech player will officially return to the top 10 of the WTA world ranking from next week.

What happened to the Ukrainian player?

The first Ukrainian player Elina Svitolina also competed at these tournaments in Germany. She confidently passed through the tournament draw, but withdrew immediately before the quarterfinal match against the Chinese player Wang Xinyu. The athlete decided to preserve her condition before the start of Wimbledon.