Naomi Osaka has teased a future doubles partnership and rumours suggest she may step on the court with Nick Kyrgios. The Aussie enjoys playing with a partner and captured the men’s doubles title with compatriot Thanasi Kokkinakis at the Australian Open in January - the first Australian duo to win the tournament since 1997.
Former world number one Osaka is keen to play mixed doubles at Wimbledon this summer, and she has yet to confirm who her partner will be. However, she shares the same agent as the enigmatic Kyrgios - sparking rumours that he would be the one to join her at SW19.
“So I have been like really trying to focus on my net game because I’m going to play mixed doubles in Wimbledon – I know, shocking right? I’m shocked too,” the Japanese star revealed. “I really don’t want to like disappoint the person I’m playing with because whenever I play doubles I always say sorry, I’m going to try not being a liability, if this person sees it and they want to like respond, they can do that, but I don’t know.
“Isn’t it more fun to kind of see it when it’s around the time? I’m pretty sure if you wanted to guess you could guess who it is.” Back in March, Osaka did not rule out the possibility of a team-up in the future. "If he wants to attempt to carry us, I'll consider it," she joked when asked in a press conference.
"But I haven't played doubles in years and I'm not quite great at it. I know he just won the Australian Open doubles title. Yeah, if he wants to do everything." Osaka has won just two of her 16 outings in doubles format, a low number compared to Kyrgios' 50 per cent win ratio.
With Wimbledon still two months away, the clay court season is in full swing and Osaka has already been knocked out of the Madrid Open. The Japanese star had her serve broken five times and committed a litany of unforced errors as she lost 6-3, 6-1 to Spain’s Sara Sorribes Tormo in the second round. Osaka said her movement was restricted by pain in her left leg, which was heavily taped.
"I felt something in my Achilles after my last match, and like, I wasn't really able to hit yesterday because I wanted it to go away," she said. "Honestly, I probably should have been a bit smarter about the whole way that I went through everything.
"I feel like I couldn't play the way that I wanted to play, like I was limited. I don't even really know what I did to my Achilles, so I'm probably going to get an ultrasound and see what happened, and then me and my team will kind of move forward from there."
Following a myriad of upsets, Emma Raducanu is the only seeded top 10 player who still remains in the tournament. The Brit, making her first appearance in the Spanish capital, defeated Tereza Martincová in her opening match, before ousting Marta Kostyuk yesterday. The US Open champion will face Anhelina Kalinina in a round of 16 clash tomorrow evening.
