Emma Raducanu and Naomi Osaka faced two different fortunes on Thursday in Asia as one of them advanced while the other one was forced to withdraw.
Both players were having a bad season and they hoped to turn it around in Asia. While Emma Raducanu signed up for 2022 Korea Open in Seoul, Naomi Osaka competed in her home country at the 2022 Japan Open in Tokyo and they both got through the first round.
The sixth-seeded Raducanu took on Yanina Wickmayer from Belgium for the spot in the quarterfinals. Everything went well for the young Brit since the first set when she converted her break point in the fifth game to gain the lead.
Despite losing one break later, she added two more to eventually win the set 6-3 and enter the second one as the player with upper hand. And the 2021 US Open champion used the advantage to quickly get a break and after slightly more than an hour, she led 6-3, 4-1 in Seoul.
Yet, her opponent fought back and it seemed that the set will need to be decided in a tie-break. But Raducanu showed that she came to Seoul to win and broke her opponent in the twelfth game to win the match 6-3, 7-5 and set up quarterfinal clash with the third-seeded Magda Linette.
On the other hand, Naomi Osaka was supposed to take on the fifth-seeded Beatriz Haddad Maia in the second round. However, the 4-time Grand Slam champion was forced to withdraw from the match because of illness and so she spent only around 9 minutes on the courts in Tokyo after her opponent retired already after one game in the first round.
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