Naomi Osaka gets hard-fought win in Australian Open 1R to crush injury concerns

Two-time Australian Open champion Naomi Osaka started her 2025 Australian Open campaign today with a match against Caroline Garcia. It wasn’t the easiest matchup for Osaka, who was beaten twice by Garcia in the past especially in light of the injury concerns which forced her to retire in Auckland.

In fact, one of those losses was at the Australian Open, which happened just last year when Garcia won in two sets. Garcia also bested her in their most recent match at the 2024 Miami Open, but Osaka managed a win over her in Australia in 2021.

The matchup is stylistically interesting because they are somewhat similar players. Both have a strong serve and play hyper-aggressive baseline tennis with lots of winners and errors. Osaka is more talented, but she hasn’t really hit that peak in a very long time. However, under new coach Patrick Mouratoglou, there are signs that she’s getting there slowly.

Set 1

The opening set started pretty much as expected. Both held serve in their first games without too many issues. Garcia was serving well, but in the rallies, Osaka had more initiative. She ended up breaking first, taking a 3-2 lead. She hit a superb winner to create a break chance, and then a Garcia unforced error handed it over to her.

Osaka wasn’t serving that well to start the match, but she was able to hold off Garcia in the rallies, which was key to winning the opening set. Osaka ultimately won it 6-3 after only 29 minutes of play because the rallies were very short as both players tried to win them quickly. It was basically a baseline trade-off with Osaka coming out on top, having had two more winners and two fewer errors.

Set 2

The second set was totally opposite of the first set. The momentum completely flipped, and it was Garcia who had the upper hand. She played a tiny bit better, but what really flipped the momentum was Osaka’s horrible serving.

She hit her first serve only 29% of the time, which allowed Garcia to put a lot of pressure on her, resulting in two breaks and a 6-3 second set finish.

Set 3

In the third set, we saw quite a bit of battling between the players. Osaka broke first, taking an early lead 2-1. Then she saved a break point to make it 3-1. Both were hitting pretty well by now, but Osaka returned to serving strongly, which made all the difference.

Even so, Osaka still faced break chances, but she was able to hold on and keep herself afloat. In the end, it was more than enough to win as she triumphed 6-3, 3-6, 6-3.