Naomi Osaka showed that she is on the road to recovery from the abdominal injury that forced her out of the Australian Open in January, but getting sharp and match tough is going to take a little more time.
Osaka, the four-time Grand Slam champion and former world No. 1, lost to Camila Osorio of Colombia, the world No. 53, in straight sets Wednesday night (6-4, 6-4) in the first round of Indian Wells. On social media, she later described the defeat as the “worst match I’ve ever played in my life.”
Osaka, ranked 56th, and Osorio were dead even through the first eight games, but Osaka committed a flurry of errors while serving at 4-4. It gave Osorio the chance to serve out the set, and the spunky Colombian didn’t waste it.
The game was a microcosm of the match. Osaka committed errors every which way. Balls flew long and wide. Some missed by a few inches. Others missed by a few feet.
The errors were especially prevalent when Osaka was under pressure. Osaka and Patrick Mouratoglou, her coach since September, focused on that dynamic for months and seemed to have made headway as Osaka got on a roll at the start of the year.
Osaka made the finals in Auckland and was rolling against Clara Tauson when she aggravated an abdominal injury and had to retire after the first set. Osaka played some of her best tennis since her return from maternity leave at the beginning of 2024 through 2 1/2 matches at the Australian Open, including a win over Karolina Muchova, one of the world’s top players.
Then, Osaka strained the muscle again and had to retire from her third-round match with Belinda Bencic after the first set. She had dominated Bencic until the injury.
Osaka returned to California and rested. But she had two hard weeks of training ahead of Indian Wells, and Mouratoglou pronounced her ready to go. Physically, perhaps, but the tennis just wasn’t there.
“It’s crazy for me, a dream come true,” said Osorio, 23, who had never won a match in Indian Wells. Her win marked the first time a woman from Colombia has beaten a former world No. 1.
For Osaka, who won Indian Wells in 2018, the loss allows her to rest before she heads to the Miami Open, one of the events closest to her heart and near where she grew up in South Florida. After her defeat, Osaka confirmed that her body is fit, but her form just was not there.
“I don’t think I was too good on my end,” she said in her news conference.
She described a frustrating month after the Australian Open in which she was not allowed to play for a week, could not serve for another week, then was allowed to slowly begin serving but only if she slowly increased her intensity week by week so as not to reinjure her abdominal muscle.
“I did well in Australia,” she said. “It feels a little bit like stopping starting again.”
That said, even with the loss, Osaka said her start to the year feels far better than last year, when she struggled to find any consistency. Or maybe she’s getting used to the idea she will likely never have a smooth ride back to the top of the sport.
“It feels like a bump in the road,” she said. “I don’t feel like I played well at all, but I still feel like I had so many chances to be in the match.”
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(Photo: Clive Brunskill / Getty Images)
