Naomi Osaka reveals the early days of her partnership with Patrick Mouratoglou were “a bit hard” – not because they didn’t understand each other, but because they were both introverted and needed some time to get everything kickstarted.
Through the first nine months of her post-pregnancy comeback, the four-time Grand Slam champion wasn’t happy with the direction in which she was going so she decided to split with Wim Fissette after the US Open. Shortly after, she announced Serena Williams’ former long-time coach as the replacement.
“He is a really good coach. Really interesting guy. I think in the beginning, I don’t know, I’m quite introverted, so it’s really hard to get me to talk. And that was a bit hard for him so now, that our dynamic looks lot better and I hope, hopefully, we can get a lot more matches then,” Osaka said on Tennis Channel.
Osaka has been looking better since adding Mouratoglou but injuries have been a problem
In their first tournament together, the Japanese made the round-of-16 at the WTA 1000 tournament in Beijing before retiring injured against Coco Gauff. The 27-year-old didn’t play any other tournaments in the rest of 2024.
At the start of this season, Osaka made a bang and reached her first final since the 2022 Miami Open. That one ended in a heartbreaking way for the former world No. 1 as she had just won the first set of her Auckland final when an abdominal injury forced her to retire. At the Australian Open, the Japanese also made a promising start, beating Caroline Garcia and Karolina Muchova before retiring mid-match against Belinda Bencic.
If not for injury setbacks, the feeling is that Osaka and Mouratoglou would have already had a couple of big results as a duo.
However, the 27-year-old appears to be back to being fully healthy now as she won her opening two matches in Miami to set up a third-round clash against Hailey Baptiste.
Tennis World USA