{"id":34691,"date":"2021-02-14T02:14:14","date_gmt":"2021-02-14T03:14:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=34691"},"modified":"2021-02-14T06:12:51","modified_gmt":"2021-02-14T06:12:51","slug":"osakas-surprising-admission-after-open-thriller","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=34691","title":{"rendered":"Osaka's surprising admission after Open thriller"},"content":{"rendered":"

So good for so long lately, Naomi Osaka was just one point from the end of her lengthy winning streak, one point from leaving the Australian Open<\/a> with a loss to Garbi\u00f1e Muguruza.<\/p>\n

Bleak as things looked for her late in a big-hitting matchup of Grand Slam champions and former No.1-ranked women, Osaka never wavered, erasing two match points and grabbing the last four games to edge Muguruza 4-6 6-4 7-5<\/a> at Rod Laver Arena in the fourth round on Sunday.<\/p>\n

The third-seeded Osaka returns to the quarter-finals of a tournament she won in 2019 for one of her three major trophies. Osaka ran her winning streak to 18 matches \u2014 a run that included a US Open title in September \u2014 and put a stop to Muguruza's own fine form of late.<\/p>\n

Heading into Sunday \u2014 the second day of the tournament without any spectators, because of a local COVID-19 lockdown \u2014 two-time major champion Muguruza had been broken only once in this Australian Open. She had dropped a total of 10 games through three matches.<\/p>\n

But Osaka broke her five times and won 17 games in all in a contest featuring entertaining baseline back-and-forth play and terrific serving by both on a cloudy day with the temperature only in the teens. The Japanese superstar made a surprising admission post-match.<\/p>\n

Watch the Australian Open with live streams of every court at 9Now. Click here to start watching!<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

"I was a bit intimidated, because I knew that she was playing really well coming into this match," Osaka said.<\/p>\n

"In the stressful points, I feel like I just had to go within myself. And I know that today I probably hit a lot of unforced errors, but I feel like it was what I needed to do, because I couldn't really give her any short balls because she would finish it."<\/p>\n

Osaka wound up with more unforced errors, 36-28, but also more winners, 40-24.<\/p>\n

The key moment came when Osaka was serving at 15-40 while trailing 5-3 in the final set. Muguruza could not convert either of those match points: Osaka delivered one of her 11 aces at 191 km\/h on the first; Muguruza missed a groundstroke on the second.<\/p>\n

Fifteen minutes later, the match would be over.<\/p>\n

Muguruza served for the win in the next game and got broken when Osaka smacked a cross-court forehand winner to close a 14-stroke exchange. After holding to go up 6-5, Osaka broke Muguruza yet again to win their first head-to-head meeting.<\/p>\n

Osaka, a 23-year-old who was born in Japan and moved to the U.S. with her family when she was 3, now faces unseeded 35-year-old Hsie Su-wei of Taiwain with a semifinal berth at stake.<\/p>\n

"I'm not really looking forward to it," Osaka said. "She's going to be really tough."<\/p>\n

\"Naomi<\/p>\n

The 71st-ranked Hsieh's 6-4, 6-2 victory over 2019 French Open finalist Marketa Vondrousova made her the oldest woman to make her major quarter-final debut in the professional era.<\/p>\n

This is Hsieh's 38th main-draw appearance at a Grand Slam tournament.<\/p>\n

Hsieh plays with an unusual style that includes two-handed shots off both sides, and that might have flustered the 19th-seeded Vondrousova, who made 31 unforced errors, 13 more than the winner.<\/p>\n

Hsieh beat 2019 US Open champion Bianca Andreescu in the second round.<\/p>\n

For a daily dose of the best of the breaking news and exclusive content from Wide World of Sports, subscribe to our newsletter by<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0clicking here!<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So good for so long lately, Naomi Osaka was just one point from the end of her lengthy winning streak, one point from leaving the […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34691"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34691"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34691\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34693,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34691\/revisions\/34693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}