Former World No.1 Naomi Osaka rolled to a 6-3, 6-1 win over No.9 seed Ons Jabeur in Wednesday’s first round of the National Bank Open presented by Rogers.
The win, which lasted just 1 hour and 12 minutes, is Osaka’s fifth over a Top 20 player this year in her return from maternity leave — and her third on hard courts, the surface on which she’s captured her four Grand Slam titles.
“Everyone knows I really love hard courts. I wasn’t thinking too much. It was very instinctual,” Osaka said post-match. “Honestly, when I play the best players, like Ons, I tend to play better.
“I’m feeling quite confident in myself as a person and as a player, and I think that showed a little.”
Osaka last won a match in Canada in 2019, when she reached the quarterfinals — but she hit 14 winners to 13 unforced errors in a tidy performance against Jabeur, who had 27 miscues in her first match action since Wimbledon. (The Tunisian withdrew from last week’s Mubadala Citi DC Open with a shoulder problem.)
More notable numbers from Osaka’s win included:
0: Despite only land 46% of her first serves, Osaka did not face a break point in victory.
2: Osaka is now 2-0 against Jabeur all time. She also beat her on hard courts at the 2022 Australian Open.
4: Jabeur was broken four times, and only landed 36% of her first serves.
8: Osaka has now won eight hard-court matches this year — nearly 50% of her 17 overall match wins.
Osaka advances to a seventh career meeting with Elise Mertens, against whom she’s 1-1 this year. The Belgian won in Indian Wells, while Osaka won her first grass-court match in five years against Mertens in ‘s-Hertogenbosch.
More to come…