PARIS– Angélique Kerber eliminated Naomi Osaka 7-5, 6-3 in the first round of Paris Olympics tennis competition on Saturday night in a clash between former No. 1 ranked players who hold multiple Grand Slam titles.
Kerber, the 2016 silver medalist in Rio de Janeiro, said she will retire after competing for Germany at the Summer Olympics.
Osaka was hoping to perform better than she did at the Tokyo Olympics three years ago in her home country of Japan. She was expected to be one of the big stars and was given the honor of lighting the cauldron at the opening ceremony.
But Osaka lost in the third round and said she felt real pressure to perform well in front of her home crowd. She was born in Japan to a Japanese mother and a Haitian father, and the family moved to the United States when Osaka was 3 years old.
Osaka rose to the top of tennis a few years ago, winning four major championships – two each at the US Open and Australian Open – from 2018 to 2021 and becoming the highest-paid female athlete in any sport.
It was at the 2021 French Open – held at the same venue as the Paris Olympics tennis competition – that Osaka first revealed she was dealing with anxiety and depression and began taking a series of mental health breaks. She was one of the first prominent athletes to speak publicly about these topics and, along with fellow Olympians Simone Biles and Michael Phelps, helped make them part of the national conversation.
Osaka then left the tour while pregnant; her daughter was born in July 2023. She returned to the Grand Slam at the Australian Open in January and appeared to be back to her best tennis during the French Open a few months later, when she pushed eventual champion Iga Swiatek to three sets and held a starting point.
Clay, however, has never been Osaka’s best surface, mainly because it dulls her best shots – her serve and forehand, decreasing the way they affect opponents.
Against Kerber, Osaka’s shots were wrong. She finished with 30 unforced errors, almost three times as many as Kerber’s 11. And Osaka only broke Kerber once, losing four of her own service games.
Kerber, 36, isn’t exactly a big fan of clay either: it’s the only major tournament she hasn’t won.
Kerber took home trophies from the Australian Open and US Open in 2016, and Wimbledon in 2018. She has never advanced past the quarterfinals in Paris.
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