Naomi Osaka won her first-round match at the French Open on Sunday. According to ESPN, it is her first win at the French Open since 2021, having spent several months out with injury and taken maternity leave.
Osaka defeated Italian Lucia Bronzetti 6-1, 4-6, 7-5 on Court Philippe-Chatrier. Bronzetti was ranked 67th, while Osaka is currently unranked.
Prior to the match, Osaka admitted that she often gets nervous during the first-round.
“I think for me I always feel a lot more nervous during the first round of Slams, just because I want to do well so badly, and the first round is the first round, so you kind of almost feel like the tournament didn’t even start and you’re out if you lose,” Osaka said in her pre-event press conference per Tennis.com.
“That’s for me what I feel. But I think, I don’t know, growing up, the Slams were the tournaments that I watched on TV the most. I just want to be here for as long as I can.”
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The Grand Slam champion dropped a 4-0 lead in the third set but rallied to win three-straight games and close out the match. After the match, she admitted she was thinking about her match win-drought.
“I was kind of, in my head, thinking I didn’t win a match in Australia, so I’d really love to win one here,” she said per ESPN. “Obviously that was wasn’t a good train of thought. … I kind of focused on it a bit too much instead of trying to play point by point, and I think towards the end I was able to erase that thought from my head.”
Osaka will face world no. 1 Iga Świątek tomorrow in the second-round.
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