Naomi Osaka was not required to play after teammate Nao Hibino yesterday sent Japan to their first Billie Jean King Cup Finals in a 3-1 qualifying win over Kazakhstan, while Australia surged into the finals with a 4-0 victory over Mexico, handing Grand Slam champion Samantha Stosur a winning start to her reign as captain.
Former world No. 1 Osaka was appearing at the competition for the first time since 2020 and won her opening singles game on Friday.
However, she did not need to play a second time after Hibino clinched Japan’s spot in November’s finals in Seville with a hard-fought 6-4, 3-6, 7-6 (9/7) win over world No. 50 Yulia Putintseva.
Photo: AFP
“I didn’t play today, but it’s been an absolute pleasure to be a part of this team,” Osaka said in an on-court interview. “Nao, you saved us.”
Osaka, who returned to tennis late last year after giving birth, was appearing in Japan for the first time since playing at the Pan Pacific Open in September 2022.
She beat Putintseva 6-2, 7-6 (7/5) on Friday, hitting 15 aces and no double faults to stake Japan to a 2-0 lead.
Hibino said that Osaka had brought presents for her Japan teammates and had been an important presence in the dressing room.
However, it was Hibino who took center stage on the second day’s play, fending off four straight match points for Putintseva before coming back to win the third-set tiebreaker.
“I started wondering if it was OK for me to win my match — there were a lot of fans looking forward to watching Osaka,” laughed world No. 79 Hibino. “It was mixed emotions but I really wanted to clinch the win.”
Kazakhstan salvaged a consolation point from the doubles dead rubber when Danilina and Zhibek Kulambayeva beat Shuko Aoyama and Ena Shibahara 7-6 (9/7), 3-6, 11-9.
Kazakhstan were without world No. 4 Elena Rybakina, who lost in the final of the Miami Open last month.
Meanwhile, Osaka said she “would love to play” at the Paris Games is she is granted a spot.
The four-time Grand Slam champion might need to go through an appeals process to claim a place after failing to make a mandatory two appearances for Japan in the Billie Jean King Cup during the current Olympic cycle.
Osaka lit the cauldron at the opening ceremony of the COVID-19-delayed Tokyo Games in 2021, where she went on to make the third round.
After yesterday’s victory, she told reporters that she would play in Paris “if they let me.”
Osaka’s world ranking has risen from 831 to 193 since she began her comeback, although she has not gone beyond the quarter-finals in six tournaments.
In Brisbane, the seven-time champions Australia took a commanding 2-0 lead, allowing Stosur to rest Arina Rodionova and hand a debut to 18-year-old Taylah Preston.
She seized the opportunity with both hands, sweeping past the experienced Marcela Zacarias, 12 years her senior, 6-1, 6-1 to put the tie beyond Mexico’s reach.
Daria Saville and Ellen Perez rubbed salt in the wounds by beating Mexican duo Jessica Hinojosa Gomez and Maria Fernanda Navarro 6-3, 6-1 in the dead rubber doubles.
“I’m just trying not to cry at the moment, to be honest,” Preston said. “It’s a very, very amazing feeling and so grateful for the opportunity from Sam and the rest of the team to be able to play and close out the tie.”
Zacarias was bidding to bank her 22nd Billie Jean King Cup match win and claim sole ownership of the record by a Mexican player.
However, she was no match for the emerging teenager, who made her WTA Tour main-draw debut at the 2022 Rosmalen Grass Court Championships as a qualifier before an injury derailed her progress.
While Australia booked their place at November’s finals in Seville, Mexico must now contest the playoffs in the same month.
Taiwanese world No. 1 women’s doubles star Hsieh Su-wei on Saturday overcame a first-set loss to win her opening match at the Madrid Open. Top seeds Hsieh and partner Elise Mertens of Belgium, with whom she last month won her fourth Indian Wells women’s doubles title, bounced back from a rocky first set to beat Asia Muhammad of the US and Aldila Sutjiadi of Indonesia 2-6, 6-4, 10-2. Hsieh and Mertens were next to face Heather Watson of the UK and Xu Yifan of China in the round of 16. Thirty-eight-year-old Hsieh last month reclaimed her world No. 1 spot after her Indian
EYES ON THE PRIZE: Armed with three solid men’s singles shuttlers and doubles Olympic champions, Taiwan aim to make their first Thomas Cup semi-final, Chou Tien-chen said Taiwanese badminton star Tai Tzu-ying yesterday quickly dispatched Malaysia’s Goh Jin Wei in straight sets, while her male counterpart Chou Tien-chen beat Germany’s Kai Schaefer, as Taiwan’s women’s and men’s teams won their Group B opening rounds of the TotalEnergies BWF Thomas and Uber Cup Finals in Chengdu, China. World No. 5 Tai beat Goh 21-19, 22-20 in a speedy 33 minutes, her fourth straight victory over the world No. 24 shuttler since they first faced each other in the quarter-finals of the 2018 Malaysia Open, where Tai went on to win the women’s singles title. Malaysia followed up Tai’s opening victory
Chen Yi-tung (陳奕通) secured a historic Olympic berth on Sunday by winning the senior men’s foil event at the 2024 Asia Oceania Zonal Olympic Fencing Qualifiers in United Arab Emirates. Chen defeated Samuel Elijah of Singapore 15-4 in the final in Dubai to secure the only wild card in the event, making him the first male Olympian fencer from Taiwan in 36 years and only the sixth Taiwanese fencer to ever qualify for the quadrennial event. The last appearance by a Taiwanese male fencer at the Olympics was in 1988, when Wang San-tsai (王三財) and Cheng Ming-hsiang (鄭明祥) competed in Seoul. The
A wine merchant who blind tasted a different glass of wine at each mile of the London Marathon on Sunday has said he feels “honored” his challenge went viral on social media, as he surpassed his fundraising target. Tom Gilbey, nicknamed “the wine guy,” sampled 25 glasses of wine during the race, stopping to guess the drink’s grape variety, country of origin and vintage at each mile. A video he posted on TikTok has amassed more than 3.2 million views. He had his first sip at about 9:30am, shortly after the race began. Gilbey said he aimed to raise £2,000 (US$2,487) for Sobell