LONDON (AP) — Naomi Osaka might be more comfortable on grass courts these days but she will once again leave Wimbledon in the third round after a 3-6, 6-4, 6-4 loss to Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova on Friday.
Osaka said afterward that she was upset by the result because she “actually thought I could play well, like, in general” and “make a deep run here.”
“I wanted to do better than I did before,” she said. “Also, I felt like I was trying so hard.”
Asked what positives she can take away from the grass-court portion of the season, Osaka replied: “I’m just going to be a negative human being today. I’m so sorry. I have nothing positive to say about myself, which is something I’m working on.”
She is a former No. 1 now ranked 50th and a four-time Grand Slam champion, all on hard courts — she won the U.S. Open and Australian Open twice apiece.
Osaka arrived at the All England Club this year having lost three of her last four matches at the place and with a career record of 5-4 there. Her best showing was getting to the third round in 2017 and 2018; she missed the tournament in 2021, 2022 and 2023.
After a victory earlier this week, she spoke about how she played with fear on grass for years because of a knee injury she got by slipping on the surface nearly a decade ago, but was feeling better about it lately.
“With age, fear kind of crept along and, I guess, paralyzed me, in a way,” she said. “Now I’m kind of just getting over that and trying to spread my wings on grass. I think it is working, and I think I am moving pretty well.”
But from 4-all in the third set Friday, Pavlyuchenkova grabbed eight of the match’s last 10 points, holding at love, then breaking in the final game with the help of a trio of forehand unforced errors by Osaka.
“A majority of you were cheering for Naomi, but that’s OK,” Pavlyuchenkova, who turned 34 on Thursday, told the crowd at Court No. 2. “I’m mentally tough, so that didn’t bother me at all. The opposite: It gave me energy.”
Pavlyuchenkova, who is ranked 53rd, was the 2021 runner-up at the French Open, and Friday's victory moved her into the fourth round at Wimbledon for the first time since she was a quarterfinalist nine years ago.
Osaka, meanwhile, already was looking ahead to the next part of the season — on the North American hard courts leading into the U.S. Open, which begins on Aug. 24.
“I’m glad to be done with this,” she said, “and I’m looking forward to the hard courts.”
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AP tennis: https://apnews.com/hub/tennis
