Her coach, Patrick Mouratoglou told Tennis Channel 2’s Second Serve earlier this week, “the thing she needs the most” is to build up match fitness and regain momentum after seeing Osaka’s progress repeatedly halted due to injury.
“We decided to play a smaller tournament this week, we are in Saint-Malo in France,” Mouratoglou told hosts Tracy Austin, Sloane Stephens, Nick Monroe and Geoff Chizever.
“She really needs to play matches. For the last six to eight months she has been injured a lot, so unfortunately she hasn’t been able to play enough.
“We feel it’s the thing that she needs the most now. We had three weeks of intensive practice on clay, so she is ready to play.”
Osaka is next scheduled to compete at the Internazionali BNL d’Italia, a WTA 1000 in Rome that kicks off on May 6.
