4-time Grand Slam champion Naomi Osaka started her comeback marketing campaign with a straight-set win over no. 10-ranked Jelena Ostapenko within the first spherical of the U.S. Open on Tuesday.
Carrying a inexperienced ruffled skirt and a white bow tied round her waist — a customized look by Nike — Osaka made a press release properly past her trend: she wasn’t giving up so simply after a season riddled with challenges.
In entrance of a packed crowd at Louis Armstrong Stadium, Osaka exuded positivity, a spring in her step as she took down her Latvian opponent — a fellow Grand Slam champion who had 11 extra match wins than Osaka this yr.
The tennis star fought again tears as she spoke after the match, greeted by the viewers’s standing ovation.
“I so badly wished to step on these courts once more,” she mentioned. “I did not know if I might … Simply to win this match, simply to be on this ambiance means a lot to me.”
Osaka had earned a wildcard spot within the ladies’s singles important draw after not rating excessive sufficient to qualify instantly. She entered the event with an 18-15 report and ranked 88th on this planet.
After most not too long ago shedding within the qualifying rounds of the Cincinnati Open, Osaka opened up in a put up on Instagram in regards to the psychological struggles she confronted since giving start to her first youngster.
“I do not really feel like I am in my physique,” Osaka wrote on the time. She signed off her message with a promise to provide it her finest shot as she headed for New York.
Up to now, her arduous work appears to have paid off.
Osaka has received the U.S. Open twice, together with in a controversial match in opposition to Serena Williams in 2018. In her final look on the event in 2022, Osaka misplaced to American Danielle Collins within the first spherical.
When addressing the gang, Osaka additionally mentioned that she needed to maintain her daughter for awhile the evening earlier than after she could not go to sleep. Regardless of the inconvenient timing, Osaka mentioned the second was particular.
“Moments like which can be actually valuable to me and I can solely hope to maintain having extra,” she mentioned.
The primary spherical of the U.S. Open additionally noticed hype round 16-year-old Iva Jokic, who pulled off a shocking upset because the youngest American to win a ladies’s main-draw match on the U.S. Open since 2000.
Osaka will subsequent face Karolina Muchova within the second spherical on Thursday.