During what has been a roller coaster week, Naomi Osaka is seeing light at the end of the tunnel following her latest match played at the Hopman Cup.
The world No.68 has been marred by setbacks in recent days, pulling out of Japan’s clash against the USA two days ago due to feeling unwell. Continuing to battle illness, she returned to the court on Thursday to take on Russia’s Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova. A player ranked ranked more than 50 places higher than her in the WTA rankings.
Despite the odds being pulled against her, Osaka managed to prevail 6-4, 3-6, 7-6(5), in a marathon encounter lasting more than two hours. During the clash she produced eight aces and claimed 74% of her first service points. Registering her first win over a top 20 player this season.
“I’m so happy to get through that match,” a relieved Osaka told hopmancup.com. “I feel like being able to play against such a good player at that level, without feeling 100 per cent, I feel like I should be proud of myself.
“I just wanted to give the crowd an entertaining match and not play bad in my final match.”
At the age of 20, Osaka is relishing in the fact many have tipped her to be a future star of the women’s game. So far is her career, she has reached one WTA Final in Tokyo and has defeated two top 10 players (Angelique Kerber and Venus Williams).
“It’s an honour. I feel like there’s a lot of players in the 90s age group that are really good,” said Osaka. “Hopefully I can be as good as them, they all push me, so I think I just want to live up to that every week.”
Despite Osaka’s triumph, it wasn’t enough to secure the win for Japan, who lost 1-2 to Russia. In the men’s singles Yuichi Sugita was dismissed 6-4, 6-2, by Karen Khachanov, who fired 19 winners during the match. It was the first singles win achieved by Khachanov this week in Perth following losses to Jack Sock and Roger Federer.
“Finally I’ve won a match,” the world No.45 joked. “It’s a nice feeling to play the best players in the world. We had a tough group, but I thought I played well in some tough matches.
“Today, it’s the start of the new year so you’re pumped, you’re trying to find your game and I’m happy to get the win.”
Russia secured the overall win in the Mixed Doubles with a dominating 4-1, 4-0 victory in exactly 30 minutes.
Suffering their third defeat of the week, Japan will finish at the bottom of Group B.
