In Cincinnati, Naomi Osaka will play qualifying at a WTA tournament for the first time since 2018

This weekend at the Cincinnati Open, four-time Grand Slam champion Naomi Osaka will play a qualifying match at a WTA tournament for the first time in six years.

The former world No. 1, in the midst of a comeback season after her 2023 maternity leave, will play Anna Blinkova on Sunday in an effort to make the main draw at the WTA 1000 event that is the premier tune-up for this year's US Open. The 26-year-old is currently ranked No. 95, having returned to the Top 100 in the WTA rankings at the end of last month, and needed to be given a wild card just to play qualifying. When she returned from maternity leave in January, she was ranked No. 833.

The last direct acceptance for the tournament, which features seven of the world's Top 10, was world No. 49 Viktoriya Tomova of Bulgaria. 2019 US Open champion Bianca Andreescu, former No. 1 Caroline Wozniacki, and locals Caroline Dolehide and Peyton Stearns, the world Nos. 51 and 52, were awarded main-draw wild cards.

Should Osaka defeat Blinkova, she will then need to defeat either her compatriot Moyuka Uchijima or 20-year-old American Ashlyn Krueger for a main-draw place.

Osaka last played qualifying in Doha in the winter of 2018, seven months before she won her first Grand Slam singles title that summer at the US Open. She famously made her WTA breakthrough as a qualifier four years prior to that, when she stunned then world No. 19 Samantha Stosur in the first round of the now-defunct WTA event in Stanford, Calif. as a 16-year-old ranked No. 406.

After losing to Elise Mertens in the second round of the National Bank Open in Toronto this week, Osaka told reporters she was willing to do "whatever it takes" to get back to the top of the game. Including Cincinnati, Osaka has already played 15 tournaments in 2024, her most in five years.

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"I, unfortunately, have always suffered from, like, perfectionism and I doubt myself a lot, but I think going through this process and having really tough losses that I've learned a lot about myself and I learned that I really love this game and am willing to do whatever it takes to get to where I feel like I deserve to be," she said.

World No. 1 Iga Swiatek and Olympic champion Zheng Qinwen are among the players making their summer hard-court season debuts at the event.

Coco Gauff, the No. 2 seed, is the defending champion, and Aryna Sabalenka, Elena Rybakina, Jasmine Paolini and Jessica Pegul are all among the Top 8 seeds. Main-draw play at the Lindner Family Tennis Center begins Tuesday.