\u201cMy daughter, she needed me to be at home,\u201d she added. \u201cThat\u2019s just what I felt was the priority.\u201d<\/p>\n
Osaka won this title in 2018 and 2020, the only two US Open titles Japan has ever claimed, and she is 28-7 across 35 main-draw matches in New York.<\/p>\n
Her hard-court season, by contrast, has been modest: 10-6 at tour level, with a semi-final in Washington her best result of the North American swing and a runner-up finish in Bad Homburg (grass) her only final of 2026. She reached the quarter-finals at Wimbledon, her deepest run at a major since the 2025 US Open semi-final.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Confidence intact on her most comfortable surface<\/p>\n
The reordering of priorities did not extend to her ambitions in New York. Asked what she wanted from the fortnight, Osaka caught herself mid-hedge and refused to finish it.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy goal this tournament is my goal in every tournament I play,\u201d she said. \u201cI feel like I always say \u2018hopefully,\u2019 but I think if I prepare well and do my job, then I will. I don\u2019t want to say \u2018hopefully\u2019 again, but I will get far.\u201d<\/p>\n
She pointed to her record here as the reason. \u201cI think I have a pretty good record here, so I can kind of bank on that and use that as confidence,\u201d she said. \u201cI feel good. I\u2019m coming off of, where were we, Toronto, and that was a pretty good result for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
The numbers back the instinct. Osaka is 28-6 in the first round at Grand Slam level, and she has reached four major finals and won all four. She opens against Anastasia Zakharova on the same side of the draw as seed No. 12 Belinda Bencic.<\/p>\n
Nishikori pairing fell through on timing<\/p>\n
The crowded week that preceded the tournament cost her a partnership she had wanted for years. Osaka confirmed she had tried to enter the mixed doubles with Kei Nishikori, who was playing the qualifying event, and that the two could not make it work.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really wanted to play mixed doubles with Kei,\u201d she said. \u201cBut I think he was playing quallies, which is a whole different thing. It just didn\u2019t feel like we had enough time, and I had the busiest week ever leading into this US Open, and it didn\u2019t feel smart. Obviously it would have been my dream, like as a kid, you can only dream of doing things like this, but it sucked that we didn\u2019t have enough time to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
On her daughter and a racquet of her own, she projected nothing at all. \u201cShe loves swinging her little mini racquet around, and she actually hasn\u2019t been on a real court yet,\u201d Osaka said. \u201cMaybe I\u2019ll update you in a couple of years.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cMy daughter, she needed me to be at home,\u201d she added. \u201cThat\u2019s just what I felt was the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":876160,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-876159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=876159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876159\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/876160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=876159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=876159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=876159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}