{"id":387957,"date":"2026-01-03T01:05:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-03T01:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/387957\/"},"modified":"2026-01-03T01:05:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-03T01:05:08","slug":"naomi-osaka-loses-united-cup-match-to-maria-sakkari-ahead-of-australian-open","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/387957\/","title":{"rendered":"Naomi Osaka loses United Cup match to Maria Sakkari ahead of Australian Open"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former world number one Naomi Osaka says she is not at full health following her straight-sets loss to Maria Sakkari at the United Cup.<\/p>\n

Just over two weeks out from the Australian Open, Osaka was coughing at times during her 6-4, 6-2 defeat to world number 52 Sakkari in Perth on Friday night.<\/p>\n

Stefanos Tsitsipas, now ranked 36th in the world after a 2025 campaign ruined by a back injury, wrapped up victory in the tie for Greece over Japan with a 6-3, 6-4 win against Shintaro Mochizuki.<\/p>\n

ABC Sport will have live coverage of the Australian Open from January 18.<\/p>\n

Osaka lacked energy at times against Sakkari, who has been ranked as high as number three in the world.<\/p>\n

Four-time major winner Osaka revealed she thinks she contracted a viral illness from her daughter over Christmas.<\/p>\n

“I have been dealing with some health stuff, so I’m kind of just happy to be out here right now,” Osaka said.<\/p>\n

“It’s not serious, but I’m not operating at the [performance level] that I want to be operating at, which kind of sucks because I had a really good off-season, so I thought I was going to do really well here.<\/p>\n

“But then I got really sick, so I think I’m at the tail end of that, but still not amazing.<\/p>\n

“I’m just trying to get better every day.<\/p>\n

Joint ordered to rest due to illness<\/a><\/p>\n

Australia’s teen sensation is forced to lay low, with team captain Lleyton Hewitt hoping it is just a 24-hour thing.<\/p>\n

“I had a cough, a runny nose, like all that nasty stuff. Hopefully it goes away before the Australian Open.”<\/p>\n

Osaka struggled with her serve early, dishing out three double faults and a series of failed ball tosses on the way to losing her opening service game.<\/p>\n

“I definitely wouldn’t blame that on being sick, I was just really nervous, so my hand was shaking a little bit,” Osaka said.<\/p>\n

Despite the disappointing result, Osaka stayed on court after the match to sign autographs and take selfies with spectators.<\/p>\n

In Friday’s earlier tie, Argentina beat Spain 3-0 on the back of singles wins to Sebastian Baez and Solana Sierra.<\/p>\n

World number 66 Sierra beat J\u00e9ssica Bouzas Maneiro 6-4, 5-7, 6-0 after Baez had defeated Jaume Munar 6-4, 6-4.<\/p>\n

AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former world number one Naomi Osaka says she is not at full health following her straight-sets loss to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":387958,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,6571,18935,28375,46,85,35899,747,148639],"class_list":["post-387957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-open","tag-maria-sakkari","tag-naomi-osaka","tag-perth","tag-sports","tag-stefanos-tsitsipas","tag-tennis","tag-united-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387957","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=387957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/387958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=387957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=387957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=387957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}