MELBOURNE, Australia – For Naomi Osaka, this trip to the other side of the world is beginning to be a rollercoaster ride for the ages.
The new year has started well, with a run to the final in Auckland, New Zealand. But then, with her first tournament title since becoming a mother, she had to withdraw against Clara Tawson with a back injury.
The checks weren’t “great,” she said, a suboptimal development just days before the start of the Australian Open.
A few days later, the fires reached Los Angeles. The fire came inside a building of her home. She called a friend and asked her to collect her daughter’s birth certificate.
On Monday night in Melbourne, she returned to her favorite grand slam, earning a hard-fought win over France’s Caroline Garcia, who knocked her out in the first round here last year. Osaka was going up, then down, and then somehow rising in the end.
Then came Wednesday afternoon against Karolina Muchova, a microcosm of the entire journey, and another beautiful finish.
And just when it looked like Osaka’s second, or perhaps third, tennis performance was going to take another frustrating and familiar turn, she stormed back to defeat Muchova 1-6, 6-2, 6-3 in her biggest win since becoming a mother in the summer of 2023. That means she will be playing her first match. Her third round at a Grand Slam since the 2022 Australian Open.
Muchova, ranked No. 20 in Melbourne, is a talented rising star who has stepped up when Osaka has been on the sidelines. She has the kind of all-court play that has become increasingly vital at the top of women’s tennis. Osaka, with her basic attack, was unable to solve the problem. At the US Open in August, Muchova cut and nailed Osaka on the next flight back from New York.
“I was crushed when I got to wear my best clothes ever,” Osaka said on court. “She is one of the best players out there.”
It seems like Osaka has a lot on her plate a year and a half after giving birth to her daughter, Shay. A brilliant new coach sits on the field, Patrick Mouratoglou. A new dose of confidence since her first appearance in the final nearly two years ago and then victory over Garcia on Monday. Fist pumps and left thigh slaps between points have a new power. She has shown flashes of her four-time Grand Slam champion past in fleeting moments, but now she has the luminous quality of a player who has been honed for the present and the future.
“Every match, she gets better,” Muchova said of Osaka.
I’ve played great matches here in Australia. I played better at first. I didn’t let her play the game. Then I turned.”
On the fourth day of the first Grand Slam of 2025, Osaka struggled to find answers to Muchova’s all-out attack from the start. She was trailing 5-0 after about 20 minutes, despite having chances to break Muchova’s serve in two games. The group disappeared after half an hour.
When the set ended, Osaka asked herself to believe. In her best years, she had remarkable superhuman strength. She played her best game in the most important moment. She always seemed to deliver a huge serve down the T, a searing forehand inches from the baseline or a roaring backhand down the sideline when she needed it most.
This has been mostly missing during the thirteen months of this comeback. For long periods, she looked like she could play with the best players in the new post-Serena Williams era. Then the big moment comes, and she can’t.
Osaka said after her first match that she suffered from a loss of concentration during the matches. She is not a confrontational person, but her job is to fight others, like a boxer but without the punching, she said.
“It takes a lot of energy for me to know that I’m going to fight against someone,” she said.
“For me, that’s what I focus on. Obviously once I get there, I say ‘come on’ a lot and scream. It’s like I’m a different person. Until you get to that point, I think a little bit.”
The fires made concentrating more difficult.
“I’m not there, so I don’t know how bad it is or how bad it’s going to get,” she said.
Long enough that Wednesday afternoon, she was able to clear her mind and rediscover that essential superpower. She knew the score was ugly but she told herself she was only a few points away from rounding the score.
“I thought, ‘Okay, you’re on your way out, but you’re going to try to get your foot in the door,’” she said.
“I told myself to just swing it, because that’s my game. I can’t be hesitant and let it push me around the court. I also tried to think that way about my serves as well.
Osaka got into the match aggressively early in the second set, hitting a series of deep backhands from down the line that pushed Muchova sideways and back while finding the kind of groove on her first serve that lifted each player’s spirits.
Naomi Osaka roared again and again on Wednesday in Melbourne. (Hannah Peters/Getty Images)
This power kept Muchova at the back of the court, and she couldn’t get forward and hit direct shots because she’s a better performer than anyone else in the game. Here was Osaka, the old bully, sending her opponent scrambling every which way, stretching for her serve, outmatched and unable to breathe.
They went to the third group. Now it’s Muchova’s turn to try and raise her game to Osaka’s level, or perhaps a click higher. She couldn’t.
Osaka earned the decisive break points in the fifth game with a double punch from her title-winning years: a ripping forehand across the court and then a backhand pass down the line. On the decisive point, she hit a deep backhand shot that Muchova could only parry away.
Four games later, Osaka once again fought her way to three match points. Muchova saved winners on the comeback to save two of their own, but on the third Osaka cleared the ball with a header that floated – perhaps with a little luck – down the baseline. Muchova tried to shoot a high ball over her head, but it went wide of the goal and Osaka jumped with joy.
The win gave her what she was looking for. She has said she wants to play more this year than she did in 2024, but she also won’t hang around if the results don’t show, she said earlier in her return. Belinda Bencic, another player returning to the WTA Tour after giving birth, is next.
“I have great respect for all the players on the tour, but the point in my life that I’m at now, if I’m not above a certain rating, I don’t see myself playing for a while.” She told reporters during the United Cup.
“I would rather spend time with my daughter if I’m not where I think I should be and where I feel I can be.”
Osaka’s goal last year was to get back into the top 20, or at least into the top 32, so that she would be seeded at the Grand Slam and not have to face top players in the early rounds. She finished 58th last year, well short of both goals, and was forced to end her season after withdrawing from the China Open when she was held to a 1-1 draw by Coco Gauff.
She has started this season strong, and would have viewed her stint in the Australian summer as progress even if she lost to Muchova again. Osaka was better than Garcia, who played her first match after recovering from mental illness for three months. It wasn’t any better than it was here a year ago.
Muchova is as talented as anyone, capable of beating any top player on any day. There was no shame in losing to her after a series of horrific draws at Grand Slams, including rookie Emma Navarro at Wimbledon and Iga Swiatek at the French Open.
But there’s the old Bill Parcells line that every athlete who grew up in America knows well. According to the former New York Giants coach, “You are what your record says you are.”
She has been almost unbeatable since the start of the season. That’s what her record says.
(Top photo: Asanka Brendon Ratnayake/The Associated Press)
