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In the two months since Naomi Osaka’s withdrawal from Roland Garros to protect her sanity, after all the noise that followed her decision not to attend the press conferences, she has been everywhere and nowhere in that time. As she rested at home, the long-anticipated Tokyo media blitz shifted into high gear. There were magazine covers, a Netflix documentary and Olympic commercials, and then on Friday she was standing in the Olympic stadium with the world watching her light the Olympic cauldron.
Two days after making headlines around the world even more than her four Grand Slam titles, Osaka has returned to where she is most comfortable, the tennis court, and she won a solid first victory by beating Zheng Saisai 6-1, 6-4 to reach the second round.
Osaka opened the game as if nothing at all had changed, slamming a typical ace over the T on the first point. As she established herself at the top of the baseline against her resourceful and tiny Chinese opponent, she wasn’t always at her best, but she was in control and focused throughout. She didn’t have to be anything else. After failing to convert two match points in the penultimate match, she served the match for love.
More difficult tasks await Osaka and it will be fascinating to see how she handles them. On the hard courts in the highlights of last year, Osaka has been almost unstoppable. She put indescribable pressure on herself buying seven masks at the US Open last September, but she lived up to it by tearing those seven games apart and winning. At the Australian Open on her way to her title this year, she faced Garbiñe Muguruza with double match point. and responded by not making a direct error for the remainder of the game.
This, however, is a whole different task. Playing for your country in a once-in-a-career home Olympics is tough enough, but doing it after you’ve been essentially voted the face of the event as a whole is on a whole new level. Between her sparse schedule and the decisions she made, it often seemed like her whole year had gone before this event, and even more so when she revealed after the game that she had known since March that she was turning on the cauldron.
Now she’s in the middle of it. “I felt really nervous to be in Japan and play here for the first time in maybe two years, and that this would be my first Olympics,” Osaka said. “It was really nerve-racking. But I’m happy to have been able to win, he’s a very tough opponent.
After his victory, Osaka returned to speak to the media for the first time since Roland Garros under circumstances unknown to both sides. Rather than the normal press conference environment, she entered the mixed zone right next to the stadium as lines of Japanese and international media huddled together, all hoping to speak with her. The conversation was brief but she said she was happy to speak with them again.
Asked about her mental health and how she felt after her absence from the sport, Osaka said her current focus was clear: “I feel, more than anything, that I am focusing only on tennis. This, playing the Olympics, has been a dream of mine since I was a kid, so I felt like the break I took was really needed. But I really feel a little refreshed and happy again. Osaka will now face Switzerland’s Viktorija Golubic.
After Osaka’s moment at the opening ceremony, support came from many of his contemporaries. Andy Murray, who said he was asleep at the end of the four-hour presentation, noted the positive effect of his notoriety on the sport: “Great for tennis, she is the face of the Games here and I hope she can do well in front – well, it’s not really in front of a crowd, but at home, ”he said on Saturday. Novak Djokovic confirmed: “Osaka is a home favorite and a lot of eyes are on her. Being at home playing is a big pressure, but it’s good for our sport in general to see that there is a lot of attention being paid to it.
As world No.2 Osaka advanced, seed Ashleigh Barty was beaten in the first round by the indefatigable Sara Sorribes Tormo of Spain. After such a busy spring, a frantic recovery from an injury and then a victory at Wimbledon two weeks ago thousands of kilometers from his Australian home, a certain level of fatigue is to be expected. He was punished by one of the longest lasting players on the tour.
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