Naomi Osaka’s recent travels are starting to become a roller-coaster ride. The new year started well, with a run to the final in the Auckland tournament. She was ahead by a set and had her first tennis tournament title since becoming a mother in sight, but she had to pull out against Clara Tauson of Denmark with an injury.
The scans were "not great,” in her words, a suboptimal development days before the start of the Australian Open.
A few days later, the fires in Los Angeles arrived. The flames came within a few blocks of her home. She called a friend and asked her to collect her daughter’s birth certificate.
On Monday night in Melbourne, back at her favorite Grand Slam event, Osaka won a tight, hard-fought match against Caroline Garcia of France, who had knocked her out in the first round here last year. Osaka had been up, then down, then somehow up at the end.
Then came Wednesday afternoon’s match against Karolina Muchova of the Czech Republic, which was a microcosm of the whole journey and which included another sweet ending.
Just when it appeared Osaka’s game would take another frustrating turn, she stormed back to beat Muchova, 1-6, 6-1, 6-3. It was 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 event since the 2022 Australian Open.
Muchova, who was the No. 20 seed, is a gifted player who rose when Osaka was sidelined. She has the kind of all-court game that has become increasingly vital at the top of women’s tennis. Osaka, with her power baseline attack, had not been able to solve it. At the U.S. Open in August, Muchova sliced and volleyed Osaka onto the next flight home from New York.
"She crushed me when I had my best outfit ever,” Osaka said on court. "She’s one of the best players out there.”
Osaka, a four-time Grand Slam tournament champion who was born in Japan, appears to have plenty going for her a year and a half after giving birth to her daughter, Shai. She has a new and accomplished coach in Patrick Mouratoglou, a new dose of confidence from her first appearance in a tournament final in nearly two years and then Monday’s win against Garcia.
"With every match, she’s better,” Muchova said of Osaka. "She’s played great matches here in Australia. I played even better at the start. I didn’t let her play the game. Then it switched.”
On Day 4 of the first major of 2025, Osaka, who is unseeded, struggled to find answers for Muchova’s all-court attack from the start. She was down 5-0 after about 20 minutes, despite getting her chances to break Muchova’s serve in a couple of games.
When the set ended, Osaka told herself to believe. In her best years, she played her best tennis at the most crucial moments. She always seemed to come up with a huge serve down the T, a torrid forehand within inches of the baseline or a backhand screeching down the sideline when she needed it most. That has mostly been missing during the 13 months of this comeback.
On Wednesday, she was able to rediscover that essential superpower. She knew the score was ugly, but she told herself she had been just a few points away from making it close.
"I told myself to just swing, because that’s my game,” she said. "I can’t be hesitant and allow her to push me around the court. I also tried to think that way with my serve, as well.”
Osaka 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 backward. She also found the kind of groove on her first serve that sends every player’s spirits rising. 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 else in the game. Here was Osaka, the bully of old, sending her opponent scrambling every which way, stretching for serves, overmatched and unable to breathe.
Onto the third set they went. Now it was Muchova’s turn to try to lift her game to Osaka’s level, or maybe a click higher. She couldn’t.
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. On the crucial point, she produced a deep backhand that Muchova could only block back wide.
Four games later, Osaka once more bullied her way to three match points. Muchova blasted away return winners to save two of them, but on the third, Osaka dug the ball out with a looping lob that floated - perhaps with a little bit of fortune - onto the baseline. Muchova tried an over-her-head lob that went wide. 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 is not going to hang around if, as she put it earlier in her comeback, the results aren’t resulting. Belinda Bencic, another player returning to the WTA Tour after giving birth, is her next opponent.
"I have a lot of respect for all the players on tour, but the point of my life that I’m at right now, if I’m not above a certain ranking, I don’t see myself playing for a while,” she told reporters during the ASB Classic in Auckland. "I’d rather spend time with my daughter if I’m not where I think I should be and where I feel like I can be.”
Last year, Osaka’s goal was to climb back into the top 20, or at the very least, the top 32, so she would be seeded at Grand Slam events and not have to face the top players in the early rounds. She finished last year at No. 58, well below both goals, and she had to cut short her season after retiring from the China Open when locked at 1-1 against Coco Gauff.
She started this season strong, and could have looked at her time in the Australian summer as progress even if she had lost to Muchova again. Osaka was better than Garcia, who was playing her first match after a three-month mental health break. She was not better than her here a year ago.
Muchova is as talented as anyone, able to beat any top player on any given day. There would have been no shame in losing to her after a run of horrible draws at Grand Slam events, including a rising Emma Navarro at Wimbledon and Iga Swiatek at the French Open.
But there is the old Bill Parcells line that basically every athlete who grows up in America is familiar with. According to the former New York Giants coach, "You are what your record says you are.”
She has been nearly unbeatable since the start of the season. That’s what her record says she is.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times © 2025 The New York Times Company
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.