By HOWARD FENDRICH AP Tennis Writer MELBOURNE, Australia — Naomi Osaka thought for a few moments after losing a lopsided first set Wednesday (Tuesday PT), and it gave her the perspective she needed to turn things around and reach the third round of a Grand Slam tournament for the first time since 2022. “I just told myself … if she beats me, 6-1, 6-1, then she’s the greatest player ever,” Osaka recalled after her 1-6, 6-1, 6-3 second-round victory at the Australian Open over No. 20 Karolina Muchova. “Yeah, I just tried to tell myself to fight.” That she did, the four-time major winner matching the power that last year’s U.S. Open semifinalist brought to their contest on Kia Arena and finding ways to beat her. “The score in the first set was very dramatic, but there was key points that I could have maybe won a game here or there. So I kept trying to tell myself that,” Osaka said. “Yeah, just try not to live in the past.” Reflecting on the past doesn’t always hurt, though. It was a second-round loss to Muchova at the U.S. Open last year served as motivation. “She crushed me in the U.S. Open when I had my best outfit ever,” Osaka joked in a post-match interview. “I was so disappointed. I was so mad. This was my little revenge.” Osaka lost in the first round at Melbourne Park last year to Caroline Garcia in Osaka’s comeback from maternity leave, but she avenged that with a first-round victory over Garcia earlier this week. The two-time Australian Open champion next faces Belinda Bencic, the Tokyo Olympic gold medalist who is playing in her first major since the birth of her daughter, Bella, last year. Both of last year’s women’s finalists were playing at the same time Wednesday afternoon. Sabalenka, the two-time defending champion, extended her run to 16 wins at Melbourne Park by winning the last five games to beat No. 54-ranked Jessica Bouzas Maneiro, 6-3, 7-5, on Rod Laver Arena. No. 5 Zheng Qinwen, distracted by a time penalty and unable to counteract No. 97-ranked Laura Siegemund’s aggressive approach, lost, 7-6 (3), 6-3, on John Cain Arena. Zheng lost the 2024 decider at Melbourne Park to Sabalenka and went on to win the Olympic gold medal in Paris and finish runner-up at the WTA Finals in a breakout season. But her first tournament of the year ended much earlier against 36-year-old Siegemund, who attacked from the first point and put Zheng off her game. Zheng needed a change of shoes early in the second set, got a time warning on her serve from the chair umpire – she said she couldn’t clearly see the clock – and was worried about some minor issues which sidelined her before the Australian Open. “I feel maybe today is not my day. There’s a lot of details in the important points. I didn’t do the right choice,” Zheng said. Of a weak serve that bounced before the net, Zheng said the time warning from the umpire “obviously that one really distracted me from the match.” “This is my fourth year in the tour, and never happen that to me.” Also advancing were No. 7 Jessica Pegula, who had a 6-4, 6-2 win over Elise Mertens, 17-year-old Mirra Andreeva, the No. 14 seed who beat Moyuka Uchijima, 6-4, 3-6, 7-6 (8), and No. 30 Leylah Fernandez, the 2021 U.S. Open finalist. Siegemund has never been past the third round in Australia, but is taking confidence from her big upset. “I knew I just had to play more than my best tennis,” Siegemund said. “I had nothing to lose. I just told myself to swing free.” DJOKOVIC, ALCARAZ ADVANCE Novak Djokovic, seeking a record 25th Grand Slam title, added yet another record to his list with his 6-1, 6-7 (4), 6-3, 6-2 victory over Jaime Faria on Wednesday afternoon. It was his 430th Grand Slam singles match, the most in tennis history, breaking a tie with Roger Federer. “It’s been over 20 years that I’ve been competing in the Grand Slam at the highest level,” he told the crowd at Rod Laver Arena. “Whether I win or lose, one thing is for sure: I always leave my heart out on the court.” Third-seeded Carlos Alcaraz breezed past Yoshihito Nishioka, 6-0, 6-1, 6-4, in 81 minutes to march into the third round. Alcaraz, the winner of the French Open and Wimbledon last year, got off to a blistering start and never looked back, winning the first nine games before Nishioka could even get on the board. It marked the shortest completed men’s match at this year’s tournament by 15 minutes. “The less time you spend on the court in the Grand Slams, especially at the beginning of the tournament, it’s gonna be better, especially physically,” Alcaraz said. “I just try to be focused on spending as less time as I can,” on court. Alcaraz worked on making his serve more potent in the offseason and was thrilled with how it held up against Nishioka. He racked up 14 aces and three double-faults without giving Nishioka a single break point chance. “I’m really happy with the serve today, it’s something that I worked on,” he said. “I wasn’t too happy with the serve in the first round.” He won 32 of 36 first serve points (89%), his highest percentage of first serve points won in any major match in his career. Alcaraz will play unseeded Nuno Borges – who knocked out Australian 27th seed Jordan Thompson, 6-3, 6-2, 6-4 – for a place in the fourth round at Melbourne Park, where he reached the quarterfinals last year, his best finish at the major. Winning the title would make him the youngest man to complete the career Slam, having already won Wimbledon (twice), the French Open and the U.S. Open. Eight players have achieved the milestone. “That’s one of the reasons I really want to win this tournament one day, just to put my name on that short list,” he said. “Hopefully [it’s] this year.” BRAZIL’S FONSECA, 18, UPSETS NO. 9 SEED RUBLEV IN DEBUT João Fonseca definitively introduced himself to the world as the latest teen sensation in men’s tennis on Tuesday night, upsetting No. 9 seed Andrey Rublev, 7-6 (1), 6-3, 7-6 (5), in the first round. It was quite a debut in the main draw of a Grand Slam tournament for the 18-year-old Brazilian, who is currently ranked 112th and made it into the bracket at Melbourne Park by winning three matches in qualifying rounds last week. The victory over 10-time major quarterfinalist Rublev, who is 27, lasted just under 2½ hours and stretched Fonseca’s current unbeaten run to 14 matches. That includes taking the title last month in Saudi Arabia at the Next Gen ATP Finals for top players who are under 21, and another trophy this month at a lower-tier Challenger tournament in Canberra. Those within tennis have been keeping tabs on 2023 U.S. Open junior boys’ champion Fonseca for a bit, intrigued by his big serve, booming groundstrokes and cool demeanor. All of those qualities, and more, were on display against Rublev in Margaret Court Arena, the second-biggest stage in Melbourne. Fonseca got to match point with a backhand winner that he celebrated by raising his right index finger in a No. 1 gesture and nodding his head. Then he ended it with a down-the-line forehand, spreading his arms wide and tossing his head back. “I mean, not bad,” were Fonseca’s first words during his on-court interview afterward. That drew a smile from him and supportive laughter from the stands, where there were plenty of fans sporting his home country’s green-yellow-and-blue flag. “I just enjoyed every moment in this court, this amazing court,” he continued. “My first time playing in a huuuuge stadium” – dragging out the “u” for emphasis. Hitting serves at up to 133 mph, Fonseca delivered 14 aces and had just one double-fault while saving five of the six break points he faced. He accumulated 51 total winners, 18 more than Rublev, a quarterfinalist in Melbourne three of the past four years and Fonseca’s first opponent ranked higher than No. 20. “I was just focusing (on) my game, trying to put no pressure on myself, playing (against) a top-10 guy,” Fonseca said. “I was just playing my game and, well, now we’re in the second round.” He’ll next face 55th-ranked Lorenzo Sonego, who got past three-time Grand Slam champion Stan Wawrinka in four sets. Asked the key to his strong play in the tiebreakers against the far-more-experienced Rublev, Fonseca said he tries to employ “all the intensity in the important points,” “go for the shots” and show “courage.” He also cited Federer as an inspiration. “Like Roger says: ‘Talent is not enough.’ … So I put (in) a lot of hard work,” Fonseca said. “Just me and my team knows that.” MEDVEDEV DESTROYS TV CAMERA DURING 5-SET WIN Daniil Medvedev used his racket to smash a tiny camera attached to the net while he was trailing someone ranked 418th before eventually avoiding a monumental upset and winning, 6-2, 4-6, 3-6, 6-1, 6-2, in the first round at Rod Laver Arena. The fifth-seeded Medvedev earned the title at the 2021 U.S. Open and is a three-time runner-up at Melbourne Park, including a year ago, but was hardly playing his best in the second and third sets against Kasidit Samrej, a wild-card entry from Thailand who was making his Grand Slam debut. “I know I play better when I play more tennis,” Medvedev joked afterward. “So I was like, ‘Why play 1 hour, 30 (minutes)?’ Need a minimum of three hours, at least, to feel my shots better.” The camera-destroying racket swings happened in what would be the last game of the third set, which Samrej claimed to take a two-sets-to-one-lead in the best-of-five match. Medvedev’s display of anger came after he lost a 13-stroke point to trail 40-15. Samrej hit a shot that clipped the net, altering its trajectory and throwing off the Russian’s balance, before a cross-court forehand passing winner left Medvedev unable to make contact. Medvedev went up to the net and brought his racket forward with full force five times, breaking his equipment while shattering a small black camera and sending pieces of it flying. That earned a code violation warning for racket abuse from the chair umpire. Soon enough, Medvedev had dropped the set, leaving him with plenty of work to do to avoid a massive upset in his first match of the 2025 season. Medvedev quickly did turn things around, though, claiming 12 of the remaining 15 games, and 61 of the remaining 94 points. He finished with 24 aces and fewer than half as many unforced errors as Samrej, 34 to 69. “In the end of last year, this match, I probably would have lost it,” said Medvedev, who went 3-1 in five-setters at the 2024 Australian Open. “New year, new energy.” Samrej got treatment from a trainer because of a problem with his left leg late in the fourth set. He was trying to become the lowest-ranked man to eliminate one of the top five seeded players at a Grand Slam tournament since the ATP’s computerized rankings began in 1973, according to the International Tennis Federation. The biggest such result entering Tuesday was when No. 234 Alex Kim beat No. 4 Yevgeny Kafelnikov at the 2002 Australian Open. Samrej earned his way into this year’s Australian Open bracket by going through four rounds of a wild-card playoff for the Asia-Pacific region in November. He never had played against someone ranked higher than 78th until Tuesday and never has beaten anyone ranked higher than 157th. “I watched his matches, and I didn’t see this level, so I was surprised,” Medvedev said. “If he plays like this every match, his life will be good.”