The 26-year-old Japanese tennis icon Naomi Osaka recently made a comeback at the competitive stage after a gap of almost 15 months. During this span, she gave birth to her daughter Shai, in July last year. And making a comeback after staying out of action for that amount of time is never an easy task. But she proved everyone wrong.

Osaka won her first match against Germany’s Tamara Korpatch by a 6-3, 7-6(9) margin in the first round of the Brisbane International. Will 2024 be the year that the 4 time Grand Slam winner has been waiting for quite a long time? Well, the 32YO American former tennis player believes Naomi Osaka’s comeback might not be a fairytale one. But why? Let’s find out.

The former tennis player has a prediction for Naomi Osaka on her comeback journey

CoCo Vandeweghe, the former junior US Open champion, has won 2 singles titles in her 15-year-long career. Her best year came in 2017 when she reached the SF of the Grand Slam twice and QF once, all in a single season. Recently she shared a bizarre prediction about Naomi Osaka. Something that Osaka’s fans would definitely not want to hear. Here’s what she said on the ‘Tennis Channel Live Podcast’.

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Vandeweghe said, “It’s going to be really interesting to see how Osaka’s body bounces back. That’s one of the harder things. Especially at the beginning of the year is how are the anxiety the nerves that lactic acid that it creates. How is she going to manage that I mean, the amount of time she took off.” With this, Vandeweghe introduced a crucial question, and Osaka will indeed need to manage things really well to continue winning. 

Shifting towards her realistic prediction, Vandeweghe added, “It’s going to be darn near impossible for her to be able to come out as fresh as she would probably like because you cannot manufacture on a practice court what it feels like to be out there during a real live match.”

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Vandeweghe said this on January 2 and guess what happened a day later? Naomi Osaka’s journey at the Brisbane International was cut short by another former number 1 in their second-round match. Let’s have a look at that story.

Osaka’s comeback journey was cut short by the former number-one

The 31-year-old Czech tennis player, Karolina Pliskova defeated Naomi Osaka by a 3-6,7-6(4),6-4 margin in a marathon 2 hours 49 minutes clash in the second round of the Brisbane International. Pliskova came from a set down to hit a staggering 16 aces and 50 winners against the Japanese. 

Interestingly enough, even the 31YO was making a comeback after being ruled out of the rest of the season last year due to a wrist injury. Osaka gave a post-match reaction stating she’s ‘super disappointed’ with the result. But she’d now look not to get too deep into the loss and shift her focus on what’s coming next.

The first Grand Slam of the season is just days away now. Can Naomi Osaka clinch her 5th Grand Slam at the AO this year? It will not be easy, but it will surely be interesting. What do you think? 

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