For the first time in three years, the tennis world will see Naomi Osaka in the third round of the Grand Slam.
The two-time Australian Open champion advanced to the third round of the tournament on Wednesday with a surprise 1-6, 6-1, 6-3 victory over No. 20 seed Karolina Muchová. The victory was also a reversal of the pair’s encounter at the 2024 US Open, which Muchová won 6-3, 7-6.
Osaka will face former top 5 player Belinda Bencic in the third round.
One more victory would be Osaka’s first fourth-round appearance at a Grand Slam since winning the 2021 Australian Open, which seems like a lot more than four years ago. That was the year Osaka took a break from tennis after a controversy at the French Open in which she said she would forgo media appearances for mental health reasons.
Osaka took another break after a difficult exit from the US Open that year and struggled again in 2022. She stepped away from tennis to give birth to her daughter in 2023 and struggled to regain form upon his return last year.
It’s not like she hasn’t encountered obstacles in Melbourne this year. She broke up with her daughter’s father, rapper Cordae, last weekwithdrew from her final warm-up tournament, the Auckland Open, the previous week due to an apparent abdominal problem and is currently at risk of losing her home to the Los Angeles wildfires.
After her first-round victory over Caroline Garcia, she said she had to send someone to collect her daughter’s birth certificate, via ESPN:
“Honestly, I don’t think I did the greatest work of concentration, but obviously I won, so I think it’s an acceptable job,” Osaka said of her shared thoughts between Los Angeles and the tournament in which she participates. “It’s really hard for me… because I find that now my house is more of a house because I have memories with my daughter. There are so many things – memories and stuff like that.”
Despite all this, Osaka took a step forward that she had been waiting for for years.
