 "Japan's Naomi Osaka reacts during her Australian Open first round match against France's Caroline Garcia. Reuters")
Four-time Grand Slam champion Naomi Osaka got her Australian Open campaign to a winning start, defeating France’s Caroline Garcia 6-3, 3-6, 6-3 in the first round on Monday. The 27-year-old, however, has been having a hard time focusing on her objective of winning the Australian Open for a third time with deadly and massive wildfires raging back home in Los Angeles “three blocks” from her house.
“I was watching the fire map and the fire is three blocks from my house. I had someone go get my daughter’s birth certificate,” Osaka said after her victory over Garcia on Monday.
The 27-year-old former world number one, who has a young daughter named Shai, represents Japan but lives in Los Angeles.
After setting up a second-round meeting at Melbourne Park with Czech 20th seed Karolina Muchova, Osaka said “honestly I don’t think I’ve been doing the greatest keeping focus”.
“It is really difficult for me because, I don’t know, I think it’s tougher now because I find now my home is more of a home because I have memories with my daughter.
“There’s so many things, keepsakes and stuff like that. Obviously you can’t hoard them all when you’re asking them to go to your house and just grab stuff. So it is really tough in that sense.”
At least 24 people have been killed in the blazes that have ripped through the United States’ second-largest city for the past week.
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Whole communities have been scorched to rubble and thousands left without homes.
Osaka said everyone in her family was safe but she is “checking the wildfire map any chance that I get just to see what’s happening”.
“I also feel like in a way it’s tough because I don’t think I’ll go back to L.A immediately after. I don’t feel like it’s safe enough to go back there,” she said.
“It’s kind of a little bit in a limbo, but also motivating me to hopefully stay here as long as I can.”
With AFP inputs