That retirement came after Osaka retired at the ASB Classic, having shown glimpses of her best tennis in both tournaments.

Osaka reached the final of the ASB Classic against Clara Tauson, before reaching the third round of the Australian Open against Belinda Bencic.

But the four-time Grand Slam champion, who gave birth to her daughter in 2023, has now suffered a shock Indian Wells exit.

Naomi Osaka unable to analyse Indian Wells courts after shock first round exit

After falling 4-6, 4-6, to Osorio, the former WTA number one discussed the new Indian Wells courts in her post-match press conference.

“I feel like it’s a hard court, so whatever, if it’s faster or it’s slower,” she said. “I also haven’t, I guess, played too well here in a long time. So I think if it was, like, the US Open or something I would be able to tell you but not this one.”

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And asked if she is fine physically and if her lack of match action played a part, she replied: “Yeah, definitely. I think firstly, I’m not injured. I feel really good, which is, I guess, a positive to take out of this.

“Then secondly, yeah, it feels really weird, because I do think I did well in Australia. It feels like a little bit of a stopping/starting again.

“So I think it would have been really helpful to play more matches coming into this tournament, but obviously I couldn’t.

“The same thing kind of goes with my tennis today. Like, there were certain things that felt extremely off, because I could only start practice serving after a certain amount of time and stuff like that.

“So I think given the situation, it wasn’t that terrible, but I would have liked to win and continue playing the tournament.”

Naomi Osaka confused by ‘weird’ Indian Wells loss to Camila Osorio

Osaka knows what it takes to reach the very summit of the women’s game, with a superb seven WTA titles won so far.

The 27-year-old is undoubtedly a hard court specialist, having won two US Open titles and two Australian Open titles.

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Indian Wells has now fallen in line with the former, and indeed the Miami Open, with the tournament having switched from Plexipave to Laykold.

But rather than focusing on the surface change, Osaka discussed in detail where she felt she went wrong against her Colombian opponent.

“Yeah, I mean, time’s a blur after Australia, but I think I wasn’t allowed to play for, like, a week or two maybe,” she said.

“Then after that, I wasn’t allowed to serve for, like, another week. Then we had this process of I could serve but it was only like 50% for these couple of days and then 60 and then 70.

“Yeah, I honestly don’t even know what week it is right now. I mean, I don’t know. It’s weird. Like, today I don’t feel like I played well at all, but I still felt like I had so many chances to be in the match.

“Like, obviously in the last game, I had three breakpoints, which was kind of terrible that I didn’t convert any.

“But speaking on points like that, I think I am probably the type of player that’s more dominant in points. That’s how I guess I’ve been able to play so well, and hopefully continue to play well in the future.

“But there are just certain situations where I felt like even if I tried to push the ball, it would fly or it would go out or it would go in the net, so it just gave me a lot of… not a good feeling whenever I would try to hit the balls that I feel like would normally go in.”