Naomi Osaka is back in the ‘Big Apple,’ hoping to replicate her previous successes at the US Open.
Osaka has shown glimpses of her Grand Slam-winning form after hiring coach Tomasz Wiktorowski on a trial basis in July. The Japanese star had previously worked with Patrick Mouratoglou.
Osaka, a four-time Grand Slam champion, demonstrated her deep pool of talent while reaching the Canadian Open final, before losing to Victoria Mboko in three sets.
The 27-year-old has looked to move past the fallout from the Canadian Open final, after failing to congratulate Mboko during her runner-up speech.
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Osaka is a threat against any player on the WTA Tour when playing at her best, and it seems her new coach has already had a positive influence in pointing the Japanese star in the right direction.
Naomi Osaka says the simple fixes Tomasz Wiktorowski has made to her game have been ‘mind-blowing’
Matt Roberts, a tennis journalist who co-hosts The Tennis Podcast alongside Catherine Whitaker and David Law, discussed the simple fixes Osaka had described as ‘mind-blowing’ during her pre-tournament press conference.
Wiktorowski has also had previous success with another elite WTA Tour player: Iga Swiatek. Swiatek won four Grand Slam titles while working with the Polish coach.
Roberts said: “Back earlier in her career when she [Osaka] had Sascha Bajin [as coach], he had been in Serena’s camp as well, Wim Fissette had obviously had a lot of success before working with Osaka.
“Whereas I just felt that that’s a big contrast with some other players who I know go on kind of really painstaking processes of figuring out the right coach based on chemistry and really based on what you can do for me.
“I think it was an interesting sort of insight that Osaka gave there in terms of how she likes to pick her coaches.
“Then she just had a little bit more detail in terms of some of the stuff that they’ve been doing. She talks a lot about how it’s not technical stuff at this point in the season, because tournaments are happening and he doesn’t think that now is the right time to work on technical stuff.
“So she talks about how it’s a lot of tactical stuff, court awareness, picking the right shot at the right time. She explained how he draws little sketches of tennis courts and puts little markers of where she should be hitting her shots.
“I think, again, that was something that we did see a little bit of in Canada. We talked about how her movement was a lot better, but also, I think her shot selection was better. She wasn’t always pulling the trigger. She was building points a little bit better.
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“So I think there have been some she described it as simple fixes to her game in a short amount of time, and she said, it’s kind of been mind-blowing to her, how simple some of those fixes have been and how effective they’ve been.
“So I thought, from that point of view, it was a really positive assessment of Wiktorowski, and I’m really big on that as a reason why we should be feeling good about Osaka here.”
Naomi Osaka’s first-round opponent
Naomi Osaka faces world number 106 Greet Minnen in the US Open first round. The pair have met just once before on the WTA Tour: at the 2024 Madrid Open.
Osaka emerged victorious in that meeting, winning 6-4 6-1 against her Belgian opponent.
Minnen has not won a singles match since the Eastbourne Open in June, where she defeated Anca Todoni and Renata Zarazua before losing to Britain’s Francesca Jones.
Since then, Minnen has lost in the first round of both the Cincinnati Open and Cleveland Championships.
AloJapan.com