Here is the result in plain text:
Naomi Osaka’s journey to the other side of the world is starting to become a rollercoaster ride for the ages. She had a run to the final in Auckland, New Zealand, but then had to pull out against Clara Tauson with an injury. The scans were “not great” in her words, a suboptimal development just a few days before the start of the Australian Open.
She called a friend and asked her to collect her daughter’s birth certificate after fires in Los Angeles arrived, and she had a tight, hard-fought win over Caroline Garcia of France. Osaka had been up, then down, then somehow up at the end.
She stormed back to beat Karolina Muchova, 1-6, 6-1, 6-3 in her biggest win since she became a mother in the summer of 2023. It means she will play her first third-round match at a Grand Slam since the 2022 Australian Open.
Osaka struggled to find answers for Muchova’s all-court attack from the start, but she told herself to believe and rediscovered her superpower. She got her teeth into the match early in the second set, lacing a series of deep, down-the-line backhands that sent Muchova sideways and backwards.
The power kept Muchova in the back of the court, unable to float forward and stick point-ending volleys as she does better than anyone in the game. Osaka got the decisive break points in the fifth game with a one-two punch from the title-winning years: a ripped cross-court forehand and then a backhand pass down the line.
She produced a deep backhand that Muchova could only block back wide, and then dug the ball out with a looping lob that floated onto the baseline. Muchova tried an over-her-head lob that went wide and Osaka bounced with joy.
The win gave her just what she was looking for. She has said she wants to play more this year than she did in 2024, but she also isn’t going to hang around if the results aren’t resulting.
Source link
