By Chris Oddo | Tuesday May 28,2019
Anna Karolina Schmiedlova served for the match twice but Naomi Osaka eventually wriggled free to avoid a shock loss on Day 3 of Roland Garros.
Photo Source: Adam Pretty/Getty
With a potentially shattering loss staring her in the face on Tuesday in Paris, World No.1 Naomi Osaka reached deep into her reserve and summoned a brilliant escape.
Osaka notched her 15th consecutive Grand Slam victory with a 0-6 7-6(4) 6-1 victory over Anna Karolina Schmiedlova to stave off what would have been a catastrophic defeat on the world’s biggest clay-court stage.
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The victory sets up an exciting clash of two-time major champions on Thursday in Paris between Osaka and Victoria Azarenka.
“Just the usual second round match,” Azarenka told Tennis Now on Tuesday after her straight-sets victory over 2017 Roland Garros champion Jelena Ostapenko.
“But, yeah, it's going to be exciting for me. I love to challenge myself against the best players.”
Schmiedlova served for the victory twice in the second set at 5-4 and 6-5 and started to falter ever so slightly as Osaka began to play with more purpose.
It was a dramatic turnaround for Osaka, who hit her 29th unforced error of the match to fall behind 5-4 in the second set. At the time Schmiedlova had only committed five herself.
But Osaka sent a message in the next game, as she paddled the ball with consistency from corner to corner and put the World No. 91 on the run with regularity.
She still wasn’t out of the woods however as another scratchy game saw her fall behind 6-5. Osaka battled in the next game, failing to convert three break points before taking the fourth and rolling through the second-set tiebreaker, racing to a 6-2 lead and converting her third set point to level.
It was the only the beginning of Osaka’s surge.
As the dreary skies shifted gears and the sun began to peek through Osaka gained full command of the proceedings. You wouldn’t know it from her face but her racquet spoke loudly enough. She played precision tennis, struck 11 winners to 4 unforced errors in the set, while Schmiedlova, clearly deflated after her failures in the middle set, settled into a pattern of erratic play.
After one and three-quarter sets of clean and close to flawless tennis, Schmiedlova became disengaged and ineffectual against the now thriving Osaka. She managed to win just three of 15 return points and surrendered three breaks of serve on four opportunities.
In the waning moments of the match, she dumped a double-fault into the terre battue in front of the net – a symbol of a vanishing act that occurred at a rapid clip. She was gone as the match concluded—a shell of herself that waved sheepishly to the crowd as she departed far from a victory that almost once was.