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Melbourne, Jan 22 (AFP): Former world number one Naomi Osaka is set to plummet below 80th in the rankings after her Australian Open title defence met a shuddering halt in only the third round.<\/p>\n
The four-time Grand Slam champion from Japan is currently ranked 14th \u2014 already low by her standards \u2014 but is set to fall after her early demise in Melbourne.<\/p>\n
Osaka squandered two match points on Friday as 60th-ranked American Amanda Anisimova stunned her 4-6, 6-3, 7-6 (10\/5) to set up a showdown with top seed and home hope Ashleigh Barty in the last-16.<\/p>\n
The 24-year-old Osaka said that she was “not quite worried” about her tumble down the rankings \u2014 the last time she was below 80 was in August 2016.<\/p>\n
“I think that it will go up to where it needs to go up to if I keep playing like this throughout the year,” said Osaka, who was happy with her performance despite losing.<\/p>\n
“I’m just going to keep my head down and keep working hard. I think I’ll get to where I need to get to.”<\/p>\n
It compounds a difficult six months for Osaka.<\/p>\n
She beat American Jennifer Brady in last year’s Melbourne Park final but then withdrew from the French Open — having said she would not do press conferences to protect her mental health — and did not play at Wimbledon.<\/p>\n
She made a tearful early exit at the US Open in September and took an indefinite break from tennis, saying she had struggled with depression.<\/p>\n
Osaka returned to action in Australia at the start of this year with a new outlook, saying she was determined to have more fun on court in 2022.<\/p>\n
She denied lack of playing time had contributed to her loss to Anisimova, but revealed her coach Wim Fissette thought otherwise.<\/p>\n
“Wim said it probably did because I didn’t play a person that served and returned really well (until facing Anisimova).<\/p>\n
“So he said if I played people that returned as well as she did before maybe I would have been more prepared, but those are the choices that I made.”<\/p>\n
Osaka was non-committal about what the new few months will hold.<\/p>\n
“Honestly, I’m not so sure right now, I’m kind of just settling in what just happened,” she said.<\/p>\n
“But I guess I’ll just think about it a lot and try to understand my body more because I feel when I suddenly play a lot of matches I kind of get a little niggle (injury) here and there, which I’d love to prevent.<\/p>\n
“I’m not sure if it’s something I have to do more during practice and training or if I just have to play more matches.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Melbourne, Jan 22 (AFP): Former world number one Naomi Osaka is set to plummet below 80th in the rankings after her Australian Open title defence met a shuddering halt in only the third round. The four-time Grand Slam champion from Japan is currently ranked 14th \u2014 already low by her standards \u2014 but is set […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-182293","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182293\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}