Naomi Osaka is through to the semifinals of the Wimbledon warm-up tournament, Bad Homburg. She defeated Russia’s Ekaterina Alexandrova in a dominant performance.
Osaka won the match in 59 minutes, defeating Alexandrova in a 6-2,6-2 victory. Alexandrova, who defeated Andreeva to reach this round, got the first break of the match in the third game and took a 2-1 lead in the opening set. However, Osaka responded and broke the serve three consecutive times.
She converted four of the seven break points she earned off Alexandrova’s serve, and faced just two break points off her serve and saved one of them.
Osaka’s win over 19th-ranked Alexandrova made it her 49th career win over a top-20 opponent, but her first ever on a grass court. All eight of her previous matches against Top-20 players on grass resulted in defeats.
Naomi has reached the semifinals of a tour-level grass-court tournament only for the second time in her career. Her first appearance was at Nottingham in 2018, where she lost to Ash Barty.
I think I just keep trying to move forward and I have a goal of wanting to play a lot of matches before I did it, so hopefully I can keep going,” Osaka said after her win. “Obviously I can’t say that I’ve had much experience on grass, but I feel really good right now. Tomas (coach) is helping me understand grass a lot more, so I feel pretty comfortable at this point.”
She will now face China’s Wang Xinyu for a spot in the final. Xinyu advanced to the finals after Elina Svitolina withdrew from the tournament due to a right hip injury.
