Naomi Osaka wants to “play with big dogs” while continues to stop having a baby and injury problems that have hampered her season so far.
Osaka retaliated in a set and a break in her Miami Open Match in the first round to win 3-6, 6-4, 6-3 against the Ukrainian qualification Yulia Starodubtseva.
It was a first victory for the former Miami finalist since January, after being forced to retire with an injury to the Australian Open.
“I want to play with big dogs so much, and I just see everyone playing so well, and I want to do the same,” she said after meeting tests in the first round. “But I have to remember that it is a process.”
Osaka experienced a brilliant early year, reaching the final in Auckland in early January, but was frustrated by an abdominal number.
She was standing in the final when she could no longer continue, conceding the victory to Clara Tauson of Denmark, and the same injury was behind her retirement at Melbourne Park when he was lagging behind by a set for Belinda Bencic – Another player to come back from childbirth in recent years.
Since then Indian wells At Camila Osorio in Colombia, who had never won a main match at the Californian tournament before. Osaka described this loss as “the worst match I have ever played” in an blunt article on social media afterwards, but said after her victory in Miami that she had learned of this deadly defeat.
“I knew I was not playing too well, but I thought, let me try to stay on the field as long as possible, because I consider Miami at my place,” she said in her interview on the field.
“(In Indian Wells) I was far too struck, so I tried to use my legs. I was going to run in every corner if I had to, and we were going to have to play for three hours if she was going to beat me.”
In the end, she needed two hours and 28 minutes to see Starodubtseva, with her reward with equality with the 24th seeded, Liudmila Samsonova.
