TOKYO – Japan’s former world No. 1 Naomi Osaka defeated Italy’s Jasmine Paolini 6-3, 7-6(4) in the Pan Pacific Open first round Tuesday, marking Osaka’s first appearance at the tournament in four years.<\/p>\n
Four-time Grand Slam winner Osaka, ranked 18th in the world, saved three set points while trailing 6-5 in the second set and forced a tiebreak before defeating 35th-ranked Paolini at Ariake Tennis Park in Tokyo.<\/p>\n
After getting the first break of the match, the 2019 tournament winner Osaka let Paolini back into the first set at 3-3 but sent a forehand winner down the line for her second break to lead 5-3 en route to taking the set.<\/p>\n
Paolini broke back to again tie at 3-3 in the second set, but her failure to make the most of her three set points to secure a break and send the match to the final set proved costly, with Osaka dominating the tiebreak.<\/p>\n
“The match was really difficult. I played her once before and I lost, so I’m really glad to be on the home court and win,” said Osaka, who entered the court in a crane-themed outfit paying tribute to Japan.<\/p>\n
“I haven’t been here in a little bit of a while, so it’s nice to bring a bit of a show here too,” she said before sending her message in Japanese. “I just feel really happy, and I really appreciate your support.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TOKYO – Japan’s former world No. 1 Naomi Osaka defeated Italy’s Jasmine Paolini 6-3, 7-6(4) in the Pan…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":948233,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-948232","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\/948232","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=948232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948232\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/948233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=948232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=948232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=948232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}