NEW YORK – Japan’s former world No. 1 Naomi Osaka on Saturday said her overwhelming feeling was gratitude after reaching the U.S. Open round of 16 and making her deepest run at a major since returning from maternity leave.<\/p>\n
Osaka overcame Australian 15th seed Daria Kasatkina 6-0, 4-6, 6-3 to secure her first fourth-round appearance at a Grand Slam since the 2021 Australian Open, which she went on to win.<\/p>\n
“I think the first feeling that I feel right now is that I’m very tired,” the four-time major winner said in her post-match press conference.<\/p>\n
“The second one is that I’m just very grateful to be here again. I think when I was younger, I kind of expected myself to win. In a way, doing press after winning a match was kind of a routine, but now I’ve experienced so many tough losses, I’m just happy to be smiling at a press conference.”<\/p>\n
The 27-year-old, playing her eighth major since giving birth, said she resolved to “not even think about results anymore and just try to focus on every match by itself” following her third-round exit from Wimbledon in July.<\/p>\n
Osaka said she was pleased with her subsequent progress, including a runner-up performance at the Montreal Open, and spoke highly of new coach Tomasz Wiktorowski.<\/p>\n
“I’m definitely pleased,” she said. “I think Tomasz has been really cool to work with, too, so as a journey, it’s not something I really pictured, but I’m glad to be living it.”<\/p>\n
The No. 23 seed’s victory over Kasatkina sets up a tantalizing last-16 battle against American third seed Coco Gauff on Monday.<\/p>\n
The star pair accounts for three of the past seven U.S. Open women’s singles titles, with Osaka winning in 2018 and 2020, and Gauff victorious in 2023.<\/p>\n
Osaka was a straight-sets winner against a teenage Gauff in the American’s 2019 U.S. Open debut and said she had predicted big things at the time for the now 21-year-old.<\/p>\n
“My recollections of that were just knowing that she was going to be a really great tennis player (and) I was right,” Osaka said.<\/p>\n
“I thought she just handled herself really well, and I knew she was going to be back. Now to be playing against her again after six years — I don’t know if it makes me old — but just to be at this point of my life, and to be playing her again feels special.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK – Japan’s former world No. 1 Naomi Osaka on Saturday said her overwhelming feeling was gratitude…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":108530,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":{"0":"post-108529","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108529\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}