Naomi Osaka became the first Japanese woman in 22 years to reach the semi-finals of a Grand Slam on Wednesday when she defeated Lesia Tsurenko 6-1, 6-1 in the last-eight of the US Open, admitting she was \u201cfreaking out\u201d inside.<\/p>\n
Osaka wasn\u2019t born when compatriot Kimiko Date made the Wimbledon semi-finals in 1996 but now the 20-year-old has the opportunity to go one better by reaching a maiden Grand Slam final.<\/p>\n
To get to Saturday\u2019s championship match, the 20th seed will have to get past either US 14th seed Madison Keys or Spain\u2019s Carla Suarez Navarro.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt really means a lot,\u201d said Osaka whose post-match, on-court interview endeared her further to a growing legion of fans.<\/p>\n
Osaka celebrated her win calmly and coolly unlike the floods of tears which greeted her last-16 victory over Aryna Sabalenka.<\/p>\n
\u201cI cried a lot last time and there were lots of people making fun of me. So this time I went straight to the net.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was freaking out inside and my whole body was shaking but overall I am most proud of not breaking a racquet.\u201d<\/p>\n
Osaka, the daughter of a Japanese mother and Haitian father, said she enjoyed playing in the blistering heat of New York which has been such a talking point of the tournament.<\/p>\n
Osaka swept aside 36th-ranked Tsurenko in just 57 minutes as the Ukrainian\u2019s challenge fizzled out in a deluge of mistakes.<\/p>\n
The 29-year-old, who had knocked out world number two and Australian Open champion Caroline Wozniacki in the second round, hit 31 unforced errors and won just seven points off the Japanese star\u2019s serve.<\/p>\n
Osaka broke in the second and sixth games of the opening set which was wrapped up in just 24 minutes.<\/p>\n
The crisis soon deepened for Tsurenko, who had needed the best part of three hours on Monday to beat Czech teenager Marketa Vondrousova in a match where she almost collapsed due to heat exhaustion.<\/p>\n
She was quickly down two more breaks at 4-0 before squandering three break points in the sixth game as Osaka glided into a maiden semi-final at the Slams.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hate matches like this,\u201d said Tsurenko. \u201cI was ill and woke up with a viral infection.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t want to pull out as it\u2019s a Grand Slam quarter-final but she played well.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Naomi Osaka became the first Japanese woman in 22 years to reach the semi-finals of a Grand Slam on Wednesday when she defeated Lesia Tsurenko 6-1, 6-1 in the last-eight of the US Open, admitting she was \u201cfreaking out\u201d inside. Osaka wasn\u2019t born when compatriot Kimiko Date made the Wimbledon semi-finals in 1996 but now […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41346,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41345"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41347,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41345\/revisions\/41347"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}