NEW YORK — Seemingly back in her US Open match, suddenly a point from getting to a third set, Naomi Osaka lost her way Thursday night, missing forehand after forehand until she ceded that game and chucked her racket, sending it clattering on the Arthur Ashe Stadium court.
Not much later, she was out of the tournament, eliminated 6-3, 7-6 (5) by Karolina Muchova in the second round of an event where Osaka won two of her four Grand Slam titles.
Osaka — once ranked No. 1 but now No. 88 after missing nearly 1½ years because of mental health breaks and time off to have a baby — acknowledged it was “a little rough” to bow out in the second round.
“It’s been a little difficult because obviously I can only gauge how I’m doing by results,” Osaka said. “Like, I feel faster. I feel better, but I lost in the second round. … Yeah, it’s a little rough because I do take these losses really personally. It’s like a dramatic word, but I feel like my heart dies every time I lose. It sucks a lot, but I’ve been trying to be more mature and learn and talk more about them.”
Osaka struggled for much of the early going, dropping five consecutive games and 22 of 26 points in one stretch.
But she played much better in the second set, getting her only break of the match to lead 5-4 and yelling “Come on!” when Muchova netted a forehand. The crowd roared for Osaka.
Serving for that set, Osaka hit a 119 mph ace, her fastest of the match, to lead 40-love. That gave her three chances to extend the match to a third set. That’s when Osaka really faltered, making five forehand errors, with a double-fault mixed in, to waste all three of those set points and, worse, get broken.
When they got to the tiebreaker, it was Muchova who asserted herself, then used some scrambling defense on the last point, flinging the ball back over the net and seeing Osaka send a swinging volley out.
“This is unbelievable — the atmosphere and the people. This is crazy energy,” said Muchova, a 28-year-old from the Czech Republic.
She enjoyed a breakout season in 2023, reaching the final at the French Open before losing to Iga Swiatek, and the semifinals at the US Open before exiting against eventual champion Coco Gauff. But shortly after that run at Flushing Meadows, Muchova left the tour because of an injured right wrist, and she had surgery in October.
She was sidelined until this June; her Grand Slam return was a first-round loss at Wimbledon last month.
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