With an outstanding performance, world number one Aryna Sabalenka reached the quarter-finals at the French Open – Naomi Osaka ultimately had no chance and lost 5:7 and 3:6 after an hour and a half of play.
The Japanese had a clearly better start. The four-time Grand Slam winner – but her last triumph was five years ago – quickly led 2-0, had the chance to make it 3-0, but couldn’t hold on to the break. A spectacular exchange of blows developed until the score was 5:5, mostly from the baseline.
Osaka with problems on the first serve
However, Osaka had to work much harder than Sabalenka to win the game because her serve kept letting her down: her hit rate with the first service was below 50 percent for a long time, while the Belarusian reached around 70 percent.
At the end of the first round, that was exactly what made the difference. At 5:5, Osaka conceded the decisive break because she could no longer withstand the extreme pressure from Sabalenka with her second serves. In the following service game, the four-time Grand Slam winner (two US Opens, two Australian Opens) served, among other things, her seventh ace and drove Osaka into return errors with hammer serves to the body.
Decisive break in the seventh game
In the second round, the Japanese fought back with all their might, but Sabalenka showed no mercy. At 2-2, the world number 16 was still able to win a game that lasted over seven minutes. But Sabalenka continued to attack, throwing in strong stops after her baseline whips – at 3:3 she finally managed the decisive break.
The spectators on Court Philippe Chatrier did everything they could to make the match last longer, but the cheering for Osaka simply wasn’t enough. Sabalenka continued to power from the baseline, had a minimal error rate and crowned her outstanding performance by winning three games in a row.
Sabalenka: “It can continue like this”
In the winner’s interview on the pitch, Sabalenka was satisfied: “It was a lot of hard work, but I pulled it off well. I kept trying to put pressure on Naomi’s serve, and that paid off in the end. My own service wasn’t the best of my career, but overall I improved here from game to game – that can happily continue.”
Sabalenka then even performed Michael Jackson’s “Moonwalk” and thrilled the fans who had attended a special evening: Since the introduction of the night session in 2021, it was only the fifth time that two players were placed on the prestigious spot. After there were only men’s matches in the late evening in 2024, 2025 and also in the first week of the 2026 edition, criticism was raised.
