Iga Swiatek squeaks past Naomi Osaka after dangling over the edge (2024)

For more than five months, Naomi Osaka as been rumbling around women’s tennis like a volcano waiting to erupt.

During the early evening Wednesday, that eruption came.With her biggest triumph in years, Naomi Osaka lost to world No 1 and three-time defending champion Iga Swiatek at the French Open on May 29.

That might sound counterintuitive, or even like a mistake.

It’s not.

Days ago, beating Swiatek on the red clay of Roland Garros seemed like a task too tall for anyone. Few even considered that Osaka, less than a year after giving birth, with little success on clay, would stand a chance.

A four-time Grand Slam champion in her own right, Osaka has shown promise during the first five months of her comeback from maternity leave, but she had yet to beat a player even close to Swiatek’s caliber. After taking the world No 1 to a tiebreak, she had no answer to Swiatek’s precision, honed with more than 100 weeks at the top of the rankings, and lost it 7-1.

But showing all the fight, power, and skill that had brought her to the top of the game three years ago, Osaka mounted a stirring comeback, pelting balls onto the lines and into the corners to lead Swiatek, 6-7(1), 6-1, 5-2 under the roof on Court Philippe-Chatrier.

This was the Osaka that for a three-year stretch from 2018-21 bullied opponents, sending them sprinting fruitlessly across the baseline and pointlessly giving chase to her blasting groundstrokes, or leaving them standing motionless and helpless to watch them fire into the tarp at the back of the court.

This was the Osaka who stood in the middle of the court with the presence of an all-time great, who competed on every point, who smacked her thigh as she waited for serves to come, letting her opponents know that they were coming right back at them.

“It just felt really incredible, the atmosphere,” Osaka said a little while after it was done.

“I cried when I got off the court, but then, I realized I was watching Iga win this tournament last year, and I was pregnant. It was just my dream be able to play her. When I kind of think of it like that, I think I’m doing pretty well,” she said.

“I’m also trying not to be too hard on myself. I feel like I played her on her better surface. I’m a hard-court kid, so I would love to play her on my surface and see what happens.”

Nine months after giving birth, and nearly three years after first letting everyone in on her struggles with regulating her mental health, she is on the verge of becoming a major force in her sport, and probably all sports, once more.

Since 2020, for all but one day, Swiatek had basically done that at Roland Garros, and on most other clay courts, but for the thigh smacking. She tried on Wednesday, to no avail, because the woman on the other side of the net was doing it better than she could. This wasn’t a simple blow-out: Osaka showed the kind of resilience that made her such a tough champion, relying on her serve to get out of the incredible pressure that Swiatek places on her opponents. Osaka saved break point after break point, often with the help of a serve and a fearless, whipping, wristy forehand that were lethal once more. When Iga Swiatek gets more than 10 break points in two sets against just about anyone on tour, the result is a 6-0 6-1 pasting.

Not here.

Osaka started loosely, spraying balls long and wide and fell behind midway through the first set. But she soon found her groove and drew even. She was a point away from stealing the first set but just missed a backhand. Then Swiatek found her own groove in the tiebreak, winning seven of eight points. This is the moment when most of Swiatek’s opponents go away, wilting as she embarks on a kind of tennis that looks like she is playing downhill.

Osaka refused. She trusted her game. She started playing downhill, and it was Swiatek who went away, almost.

Almost.

Osaka was on the verge of sealing the match on her serve at 5-3 in the third set, before missing a series of shots in the front of the court, or darn near close to it. Swiatek saved a match point, then let Osaka’s errors bring her back on serve. A game later, it was 5-5.

“I honestly didn’t believe I could win,” Swiatek said. “But it didn’t change the fact that I just tried to do work to play better. I actually managed to be more focused at the end of the match, which went pretty badly, you know. In the first and second set I felt like I’m not completely in the zone.

“When I was under the biggest pressure I was able to switch that, and maybe that made the difference.”

Osaka said she no regrets about how she played, but for one. Two points from victory with Osaka serving in the third set, she stayed back on Swiatek’s return, rather than trying to jump on the ball and seize control.

“That’s the only thing I kind of regret,” she said. “Other than that, I’m kind of taking it as a process.”

For five months, Osaka’s tennis has been getting closer and closer to where it was. The only thing that has been missing is her ability to execute in tight spots, and here, it deserted her again — understandably. There is no way to replicate the intensity of a battle in a Grand Slam against the world No 1 on a practice court in California. The only way to learn how to do it — or in Osaka’s case, to relearn it — is to do it, over and over.

For nearly two hours, she had come up with all the darting serves and lashing forehands and backhands she needed. But when she needed them most, she couldn’t find them. And Swiatek, who has been doing this month after month for the past two years, or at least getting chances to, found nearly all of hers.

A killer cross-court backhand winner brought her to match point, and then she watched Osaka send one more backhand long.

The match stretched well past the scheduled 8:15 start of the night session match between Jannik Sinner and Richard Gasquet. Thousands of fans stood in the pelting rain, unable to get into the stadium because of the rules that prohibited them from taking the empty seats vacated by people who left early.

They missed a classic, for little reason at all.

(Mateo Villalba/Getty Images)

Matthew Futterman is an award-winning veteran sports journalist and the author of two books, “Running to the Edge: A Band of Misfits and the Guru Who Unlocked the Secrets of Speed” and “Players: How Sports Became a Business.”Before coming to The Athletic in 2023, he worked for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Star-Ledger of New Jersey and The Philadelphia Inquirer. He is currently writing a book about tennis, "The Cruelest Game: Agony, Ecstasy and Near Death Experiences on the Pro Tennis Tour," to be published by Doubleday in 2026. Follow Matthew on Twitter @mattfutterman