Ons Jabeur bothered by knee injury in Mubadala Abu Dhabi Open quarter-final defeat

Ons Jabeur revealed that she has been troubled by a long-standing knee injury all week after losing in the quarter-finals of the Mubadala Abu Dhabi Open on Friday.

The Tunisian second seed was hampered by the injury throughout her 6-3, 6-4 defeat to Brazilian sixth seed Beatriz Haddad Maia, and looked visibly upset towards the end of the match.

After such a dazzling display in her first match against Emma Raducanu on Wednesday, it was clear something was bothering Jabeur during Friday's contest, and she found herself 3-1 down after the fourth game. With no further breaks of serve, Haddad Maia closed out the first set relatively comfortably.

Jabeur then showed tremendous fight to bounce back from being broken in the first game of the second set, quickly levelling for 2-2, but her resistance all but ended when Haddad Maia broke again for a 5-4 lead to give herself the opportunity to serve for the match.

Throwing caution to the wind, Jabeur unloaded a series of winners in an attempt to claw her way back into the match and engineered three break points. However, Haddad Maia held firm to close out the victory in an hour-and-a-half, and the Brazilian will face Russian seventh seed Daria Kasatkina in Saturday's semi-finals.

"First of all, congratulations to Beatriz, she played a great game," Jabeur, 29, said. "I wasn't feeling 100 per cent, unfortunately, my knee still bothers me a bit.

"Today wasn't to be my day. I was trying to fight and get through this match but when you play against someone who plays amazing like Beatriz, it's tough to compete. I tried my best and tried to stay focused and play my game but unfortunately, I couldn't."

Jabeur then confirmed that it was a recurrence of an old knee injury that was bothering