{"id":47376,"date":"2026-06-25T18:00:07","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T18:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/47376\/"},"modified":"2026-06-25T18:00:07","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T18:00:07","slug":"dominant-osaka-cruises-into-bad-homburg-semis-tennis-supersport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/47376\/","title":{"rendered":"Dominant Osaka cruises into Bad Homburg semis | tennis | SuperSport"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Four-time Grand Slam winner Naomi Osaka advanced to the semi-finals of the Wimbledon warm-up tournament in Bad Homburg, Germany after a dominant victory over Ekaterina Alexandrova on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>The Japanese sixth seed won 6-2, 6-2 in just 59 minutes to reach the final four of the grass court tournament just days from the start of Wimbledon.<\/p>\n<p>Osaka, the world number 15, is one win away from a first grass-court final of her career.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Obviously I can&#8217;t say that I&#8217;ve had much experience on grass, but I feel really good right now,&#8221; Osaka said, adding that coach Tomas Wiktorowski, who started working with her last July, \u00a0&#8220;is helping me understand grass a lot more, so I feel pretty comfortable at this point.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Shining bright \u2728<a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/naomiosaka?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow\">@naomiosaka<\/a> booked her place in the semifinals with a stunning 6-2, 6-2 win against Alexandrova!<a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/hashtag\/BHO26?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow\">#BHO26<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/67prQbUgp2\" rel=\"nofollow\">pic.twitter.com\/67prQbUgp2<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 wta (@WTA) <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/WTA\/status\/2070119279949668650?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow\">June 25, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Osaka was broken early in the opening set but swiftly struck back against the unseeded Russian.<\/p>\n<p>Osaka won eight straight games &#8212; a run which included 15 points in a row &#8212; as she took the opening set and ran out to a 3-0 lead in the second.<\/p>\n<p>The 19th-ranked Alexandrova rallied to win her next two service games but Osaka closed out the match in just under an hour.<\/p>\n<p>Osaka will play Chinese world number 52 Wang Xinyu, who reached the final four when eighth-ranked Ukranian Elina Svitolina pulled out citing exhaustion on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>Fourth seed Karolina Muchova also made the last four after coming from a set down to beat Dane Clara Tauson 1-6, 6-2, 6-4 on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>Tauson exploded out of the gates and broke the world number 11 three times while dropping just one game in the opening set.<\/p>\n<p>Muchova returned the favour in the second, breaking Tauson three times to set up a deciding set, which she won to take the match in two hours and three minutes.<\/p>\n<p>The Czech will face off against Romania&#8217;s Elena-Gabriel Ruse in the semifinals. Ruse beat American Emma Navarro 6-4, 6-2 in one hour and 15 minutes earlier on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Four-time Grand Slam winner Naomi Osaka advanced to the semi-finals of the Wimbledon warm-up tournament in Bad Homburg,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":47377,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[185,8,173,85,1257,8904],"class_list":["post-47376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-osaka","tag-article","tag-japan","tag-news","tag-osaka","tag-tennis","tag-wta"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47376\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}