Three matches into her return from pregnancy, a player cast in her own mould proved a challenge too far for Naomi Osaka. Yet the quality on show from both sides of the net in Osaka’s 6-4, 7-6 (7-2) defeat to Caroline Garcia in the first round of the Australian Open was sufficient to suggest that two women who might ordinarily expect to be meeting at the opposite end of major tournaments are more than capable of reasserting themselves at the game’s top table in the weeks and months to come.
In a tight contest featuring just a single break of serve, Garcia was outstanding. Bidding to bounce back from the disappointment of last season, when she struggled to build on her title win at the previous year’s WTA Finals, the 30-year-old Frenchwoman blasted 34 winners and staged a serving masterclass. Garcia, who dropped just four points behind her first delivery, clinched victory in an hour and 26 minutes without facing a single break point, firing 13 aces and countless service winners.
Ranked fourth this time last year but now down to 19th, Garcia looks sets fair for a swift return to the top 10 if she can maintain the level she has found in the early weeks of the season. After a 15-month maternity absence, it is Osaka who has more ground to make up. The 26-year-old’s return has naturally attracted huge interest, and for the most part the former world No 1, two of whose four grand slam titles have come at Melbourne Park, acquitted herself well. Yet it was only last July that she gave birth to her daughter, Shai, and much work lies ahead if she is to regain her former movement and sharpness.
“I think I could have done a little bit more – this is my opinion – from baseline shots,” said Osaka, whose inactivity has seen her ranking slip to 831. “I felt like I was constantly on my back foot and really hesitant. I think it might be because I haven’t played matches in a while. I was a little bit overthinking in my head where to go.
“I have to tell myself, ‘Hey, like, six months ago you were pregnant,’ stuff like that. Of course, there’s a voice in my head that is [saying], ‘Who are you to think you can come back and immediately start winning matches?’ I don’t know. I kind of always expect myself to stand a chance anyways.
“I guess just being nicer to myself is like a key thing that I learned in my time away. But it is really tough to play a good server and not make too many returns.”
Osaka favours a similar brand of first-strike tennis to Garcia, yet her ability to stand inside the baseline and smoke returns like the Frenchwoman was inevitably limited by her footwork. Half a step slow, she made just 15 of her 37 returns – a statistic that Martina Navratilova felt was indicative of where she stands following her comeback performances in Brisbane, where she defeated Tamara Korpatsch before falling to Karolina Pliskova, and now against Garcia in Melbourne.
“She couldn’t get to the ball that she wants to hit because she’s not in shape,” Navratilova told the Tennis Channel. “I’m surprised that she got on the tour, that she played this tournament, without clearly being in the top shape that she needs to be, in order to put herself in the position to hit the big, big balls.
“She was stretched out way too much, and the fact that she never had a break point tells you everything you need to know about that match.”
Barely less impressive than Garcia’s serving performance was that of Coco Gauff, the American fourth seed, who earlier battered down a 123mph delivery in a 6-3, 6-0 win over Slovakia’s Anna Karolina Schmiedlova. Gauff travelled to Charlotte, North Carolina during the off-season to seek technical guidance on her serve from Andy Roddick, a fellow US Open champion and one of the finest servers of the open era.
“It was a really good two days,” said Gauff, who will play Caroline Dolehide in round two, of her evidently fruitful work with Roddick. “I think that my serve has improved… I don’t think I could have gotten anybody else better to help me with that.
“I want to become a more aggressive server, and I feel like when my serve is on, I’m playing well. I think it was more of a mental switch. You know, just a slight change that we did, just helping me with the toss, being more consistent. I think mentally, when I have the aggressive serving mindset, that’s when I play my best tennis.”
One player who did not find her best tennis was Marketa Vondrousova, the Wimbledon champion and seventh seed. The 24-year-old Czech became the biggest casualty in the women’s draw so far, falling 6-1, 6-2 to Ukraine’s Dayana Yastremska.