No. 10 seed Karolina Muchova defeated Naomi Osaka 7-6 (4), 6-4 on Tuesday to reach her first Wimbledon semifinal.
Osaka, the 14th seed who knocked out world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka in the previous round, entered the day as the only player in the men’s and women’s draws yet to drop a set.
After two losses in 37 games in the first four matches, Osaka lost twice in the first set alone. She committed four double faults and made 32 unforced errors in the match, her most in this tournament.
“It’s hard because I played so well in my last match and today I just feel like I played really poorly and I didn’t have any energy,” said Osaka, who despite the loss still had her best performance at the All England Club by reaching the quarterfinals.
“I felt it was coming because I had played a lot more matches than usual before a Grand Slam,” she added. “I just wanted to try it out to see the rhythm, you know? Apparently it worked well. But I think I probably won’t do it again. But yeah, I would say it was like the accumulation of two weeks of playing in a row with no days off.”
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It was a rematch of the final in Bad Homburg, which Muchova won after the 28-year-old Osaka retired in the second set with a foot injury.
The Japanese tennis player, who has been on mental health breaks since 2021 and has been away from the tour while she gave birth to her daughter, was asked on Tuesday if she had problems with her ankle. No, she replied, before making a joke about “getting old.” However, she said she has “plantar fasciitis on her feet. Well, we assume so.”
“It kind of started happening in the offseason last year,” Osaka added. “I think it’s because I’ve become more springy on my feet. I think on a grass court it activates again because I have to push off a lot more to go forward. I don’t think it will bother me on a hard court. I think it’s just a change in coverage.”
Until this year, Muchova had not won a title since Seoul in 2019, which was the first of her career. In February she won the WTA 1000 tournament in Doha and then in Bad Homburg, the pre-Wimbledon tournament on grass. The 29-year-old Czech has won nine matches in a row – all on grass – since starting title contention in Bad Homburg, ending the longest winning streak at tour level in her career (there were eight matches in a row earlier this year, spanning her title in Doha and Indian Wells).
“It’s incredible – I’m very happy with today’s victory,” Muchova said in an interview on court No. 1. “I played on this court three times and the score was 0:3. “I didn’t have a very good relationship with this court, but I’m very happy that we finally succeeded and I got the win.”
Osaka fell to 5-1 in Grand Slam quarterfinal matches; only Chris Evert (48) and Sabalenka (eight) had longer winning streaks in major matches earlier in their careers.
Osaka has won two of her four major titles (2018 and 2020) at the US Open and returned to the semi-finals at Flushing Meadows last year, losing to Amanda Anisimova.
“I feel like I still have the opportunity in my head to win a Grand Slam,” she said.
Muchova, the runner-up at the 2023 French Open, has now reached the semi-finals at all four majors. The day before, she led 0:2 in her previous Wimbledon quarterfinal matches in 2021 and 2019.
She will play American seventh seed Coco Gauff on Thursday for a place in Saturday’s final. Gauff is 6-1 in their matches at tour level, although Muchova won their last meeting in Stuttgart in April.
ESPN Research, Associated Press and PA contributed to this report.