MELBOURNE, Australia – Naomi Osaka has been so good lately, just one point from the end of her long finish line, one point from leaving the Australian Open with a loss to Garbine Muguruza.
Osaka never made her falter in a big match of Grand Slam champions and former women’s no. 1-women not. Osaka never wavered, erasing two match points and grabbing the last four games to beat Muguruza 4-6, 6-4, 7-5 at the Rod Laver Arena in the fourth round Sunday.
The third-seeded Osaka returns to the quarterfinals of a tournament she won in 2019 for one of her three major trophies. Osaka ran its winning streak to 18 games – a run that included a US Open title in September – and put an end to Muguruza’s own good form.
On Sunday – the second day of the tournament without spectators – due to a local shutdown of the COVID-19, the two-time grand champion, Muguruza, was broken only once in this Australian Open. She dropped a total of ten games through three games.
But Osaka broke her five times and won a total of 17 games in a game of entertaining base-and-back play and an amazing ministry by both on a cloudy day with temperatures in the mid-60s.
“I was a little intimidated because I knew she was playing really well in this game,” Osaka said. “In the stressful points, I feel like I just had to go inside myself. And I know I made a lot of unforeseen mistakes today, but I feel like that was what I had to do, because I could not give her really short balls, because she would finish it. ‘
Osaka suffered more unforced errors, 36-28, but also more winners, 40-24.
The most important moment arrived when Osaka served 15-40 while trailing 5-3 in the final set. Muguruza could not convert any of the match points: Osaka delivered one of her 11 aces at 118 km / h on the first one; Muguruza misses a foundation on the second.
Fifteen minutes later the match would be over.
Muguruza won the next match and broke when Osaka hit a cross-country winner to close out a 14-stroke interaction. After Osaka rose 6-5, Muguruza broke up again to win their first meeting.
Osaka, a 23-year-old man who was born in Japan and moved to the US with her family when she was 3, is now facing 35-year-old Su-Wei Hsieh from Taiwan at the semifinals.
“I’m not really looking forward to it,” Osaka said. “She’s going to be very difficult.”
The other fourth round matches on this side of the women’s draw were later Sunday: Serena Williams vs. Aryna Sabalenka, and Simona Halep vs. Iga Swiatek.
Hsieh’s 71st position, 6-4, 6-2, over French Open finalist Marketa Vondrousova made her the oldest woman to make her biggest quarter-final in the professional era.
This is Hsieh’s 38th major tournament during a Grand Slam tournament.
Hsieh plays with an unusual style that includes two-handed shots from both sides, and which may have dropped the 19th seeded Vondrousova, who made 31 unforced errors, 13 more than the winner.
Hsieh beat U.S. Open champion Bianca Andreescu in the second round.