Naomi Osaka is a four-time Grand Slam champion. (AFP Photo)
Japan’s Osaka returned to competition in January after the birth of her daughter and has advanced to the third round or better at four WTA 1000 events this season.
Former champions Naomi Osaka, Bianca Andreescu and Stan Wawrinka have received singles main draw wildcards into the U.S. Open, the United States Tennis Association said on Wednesday.
Japan’s Osaka, who counts the 2018 and 2020 U.S. Opens among her four Grand Slam titles, returned to competition in January after the birth of her daughter and has advanced to the third round or better at four WTA 1000 events this season.
Naomi Osaka said she still does not feel like herself on court eight months into her comeback season following a maternity break, with the four-times Grand Slam champion puzzled at her lack of power and accuracy.
Osaka returned to action after a 15-month break during which she gave birth to her daughter. Now ranked 90th in the world, her best results have been runs to the quarter-finals at Doha and ‘s-Hertogenbosch.
“I’ve played a handful of matches this year that I felt like I was myself and I know this moment is probably just a small phase from all the new transitions (clay, grass, clay, hard), however the only feeling I could liken how I feel right now to is being post-partum,” Osaka said.
Canada’s Andreescu, the 2019 U.S. Open champion, returned to action this year after missing nine months due to a back injury and reached the French Open third round in her first event back.
Osaka’s next event will be at Flushing Meadows, where she triumphed in 2018 and 2020, but she said she did not understand why everything about her game felt “almost brand new” again.
For Swiss Wawrinka, who won the most recent of his three Grand Slam titles at the 2016 U.S. Open, the wildcard allows him to make his 72nd main draw appearance in one of the game’s four blue-riband events, which puts him fifth on the all-time list.
Austrian Dominic Thiem, the 2020 U.S. Open champion who announced this year that he will retire following the 2024 season due to a wrist injury, was also given a wildcard.
The U.S. Open will held from Aug. 26-Sept. 8 in New York.
(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed – Reuters)
