Naomi Osaka brilliantly won her first match of the season on clay on Friday in the first round of the WTA 1000 tournament in Madrid, beating Anastasia Potapova (6-3, 6-1).
“I wouldn’t say it was an easy game, I feel like I just adapted a bit. It’s really good to play on clay again“, declared the former world number one, who will face in the next round Sara Sorribes (57th in the world). In front of her public, the Spaniard created the sensation by leaving Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, finalist of Roland-Garros last year, in three innings (6-3, 2-6, 6-3).
WTA Madrid
Defendant Sabalenka falls from the start, a Halep – Badosa shock from the 2nd round
YESTERDAY AT 4:04 PM
Naomi Osaka, who received an invitation to play on clay at Caja Magica, took just 61 minutes to get rid of Potapova, who was still on nine consecutive successes on clay, including the title in Istanbul last week. At 24, the Japanese, who returned to 36th place in the world rankings after a mentally difficult 2021 which saw her fall to 77th place, has still not won a title on clay and has never passed the 3rd round at Roland-Garros, in five appearances.
To finally succeed on this particular surface, the player said on Wednesday that she was inspired by certain methods of Rafael Nadal. “I think I stole one of his methods that he uses and applied it to training recently“, detailed Osaka, who prepared on the ocher surface for several days on the land of “Rafa” in Mallorca. Naomi Osaka had made her return to the fore by reaching the final of the WTA 1000 in Miami in early April, where she gave in to the world No.1, Iga Swiatek.
WTA Madrid
23 points conceded… in a row: Mladenovic out in qualifying
04/27/2022 At 8:39 PM
WTA Madrid
To succeed on earth, Osaka took Nadal as a model: “I stole a method from him”
04/27/2022 At 15:55
