The Dane, who has battled back from a wretched run of injuries this year, weathered an early storm from her teenage opponent before running out a comfortable victor, claiming a second Tokyo title and the 24th of her career. Thus, Wozniacki has won her first title of the season, meaning that she lifted at least one WTA trophy in the previous 9 years, bringing her tally up to 24.
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“I think every time I play her, we play really tough matches”, said Wozniacki.
“I’m just enjoying it, you never know when injuries are going to happen and you are going to be taken away from the game, so I’m just enjoying every minute of it”. “She was playing some really good defense and I was missing a lot of crucial shots”.
“I’m enjoying it at the moment”. The match lasted an hour and 46 minutes and Osaka had a break advantage twice in the opening set, but she was unable to bring it home.
Teenager Belinda Bencic also pulled out in the second set with a lower back problem, allowing world number 10 Svetlana Kuznetsova of Russian Federation through. But Wozniacki’s experience proved to be too much for the teenager.
She again looked in trouble after losing her serve for the second time in the opening set yesterday, but proved nearly unstoppable after receiving treatment on her upper thigh and wrapped up her 24th career title in 106 minutes.
“In this level of match you have to play well to win by that kind of score”, said Radwanska, who also won this tournament in 2011.
From the scoresheet alone, Caroline Wozniacki’s straight-sets defeat of Osaka looks fairly comprehensive. Down 5-0 in the final set, Osaka battled back to make it 5-3.
“Basically (I want to) just try to fix the things that I did wrong today in the matches that I play from now on”.
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Wozniacki, now ranked at 28, is bidding for her first WTA Tour title since March 2015, but will come up against home favourite Naomi Osaka after the Japanese teenager reached her maiden final. She has a great serve, a great forehand. “It’s the final and both of us had great weeks”, she said. I felt she had a great backhand return, so I thought I would mix it up a bit and see what she did. She has a great game and she’s very young.
