Mladenovic stuns world No. 1 Osaka in straight sets in Dubai

Kristina Mladenovic pulled off one of the biggest upsets of the year at the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships on Tuesday night, stunning Naomi Osaka in her first match as the world No. 1.

Osaka, who was playing her first match since winning the Australian Open and subsequently rising to the top spot in the rankings, looked a little rusty from the onset—she double faulted on the first point of the match and eventually fell behind 0-3 after just 11 minutes. She got a break back to close the gap to 2-3, but Mladenovic broke again to take the first set, 6-3, after Osaka double faulted on set point.

After Mladenovic held serve in the first game of the second set, there was a string of seven consecutive breaks—and emerging from that streak ahead 5-3, the Frenchwoman broke that pattern by serving out the match. She ripped a down-the-line backhand winner to close it out after 66 minutes, 6-3, 6-3.

“Well it obviously feels amazing,” Mladenovic said to the crowd in her on-court interview after the match. “Before anything else, I’d like to thank you all for coming out tonight. It was pretty loud for Naomi, and I know you guys were mostly cheering for her, but I understand that—she’s an amazing player and a young talent, and she’s won the last two Grand Slams, which is something huge.”

Mladenovic finished the match with almost twice as many winners as unforced errors (16 to 9) while Osaka’s game went somewhat awry with a minus-6 differential of winners to unforced errors (19 to 25).

“I prepared well,” Mladenovic said. “I’ve watched her tennis a lot the last few months. I was ready for the big serve and the big shots. I also took my chances. Sometimes my first-serve percentage was not so good, but I still feel like I served pretty well on the second. She was really ripping the returns.

“I’m proud of how I stayed composed—she hits big, so if you’re not ready, anything can happen.”

The result seems like a longshot—Mladenovic is currently ranked No. 67, and she hadn’t won a match this year coming into the tournament. But she’s a former world No. 10 who had 12 career Top 10 wins coming into this match.

Osaka wasn’t happy with her performance.

“I mean, I thought I played pretty badly,” she said in her post-match press conference. “There are days that you have like that, and you just have to find a way to win no matter what the situation is. But yeah, I mean, I played against a really good player, too.”

The Japanese, who was also playing her first match since splitting with coach Sascha Bajin, said she hadn’t been happy with her practices either.

“I haven’t been practicing well recently,” she said. “I just thought it would go away during the matches. I was kind of counting on that. That didn’t happen.”

Osaka isn’t the first player to lose in their first tournament as No. 1 by any means. Of the 16 other players who’ve reached No. 1 for the first time in the last 20 years, only two of them won their first tournament as No. 1: Justine Henin at Sydney in 2004, and Victoria Azarenka at Doha in 2012.

Osaka’s next scheduled event will be Indian Wells, where she’s the defending champion.

“I think I play well after I lose a bad match,” she added. “I’m looking forward to the next tournament.”

ATP Rio De Janeiro

• Starting Monday 2/18, at 2:30 pm ET, catch live coverage of the Rio Open featuring Dominic Thiem, Fabio Fognini, and Diego Schwartzman.

WTA Dubai

• Watch Naomi Osaka, Petra Kvitova, Simona Halep and Karolina Pliskova live from the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships starting Saturday, 2/16 at 3:00 am ET

WTA Budapest

• Tennis Channel Plus features live coverage of the Hungarian Ladies Open beginning Monday, 2/18 8:00 am ET

ATP Delray Beach

• Watch Juan Martin del Potro, John Isner and Frances Tiafoe live on Tennis Channel Plus beginning Tuesday, 2/19 at 12:30 am ET.

ATP Marseille

• See Karen Khachanov, Borna Coric and Stefanos Tsitsipas live on Tennis Channel Plus beginning Monday 2/18, 8:30 am ET