After questioning whether she would return, two-time champion Naomi Osaka triumphantly and movingly returned to the US Open, defeating 10th-seeded Latvian Jelena Ostapenko 6-3, 6-2.
After giving birth to her daughter Shai, Japan’s Osaka missed the US Open last year, but she is still working hard to make a big comeback to the sport. Fortunately, she was at her best against 2017 French Open champion Ostapenko, winning in just 63 minutes with 19 wins.
With her victory, she claimed: “I was trying not to cry when I was walking out… Last year I was watching Coco (Gauff) play and I so badly wanted to step on these courts again… I didn’t know if I could … just to win this match and just to be in this atmosphere means so much to me.”
Osaka’s current performance
Osaka had not defeated a player ranked in the top ten in four years. She has advanced to the quarter-finals twice at tour events in 2024, although she has not yet advanced past the second round in the majors. However, she claimed that the US Open engages her more than any other competitions.
She remarked: “It’s like a combination of a lot of different things…I grew up here, so just seeing kids, and then remembering my daughter, but seeing kids coming and watching me play and just remembering that I was a kid… made me very emotional”
“Just seeing the stadium really full, it meant a lot, because I was, like, ‘Oh, I hope people come watch me play,” Osaka added.
Moreover, Osaka admitted that Ostapenko was a difficult first-round opponent, who entered the event as a wildcard and is currently ranked 88th. She claimed playing against the best players was actually freeing. At the French Open, she had a match point against world number one Iga Swiatek.
“I’m not sure if it’s motivation or if I feel like I have no other choice but to play well, and then it gets rid of all the expectations and all the pressure I put on myself, because I know, like, no matter what, the tennis is going to be really great tennis, even if I win or lose… That’s kind of my mindset whenever I play seeded players or really good players,” she said.
Source: Yahoo! Sports