Naomi Osaka and Angelique Kerber seem up for the hard fight to get the best from themselves again

At a certain stage of their most recent wins at Indian Wells, the signs looked ominous for Naomi Osaka and Angelique Kerber.

For Osaka, those signs came early in her opener against Sara Errani. Serving at 2-2 in the first set, she double-faulted three straight times, then sent a wild forehand wide to hand the Italian a break. Osaka trudged to the sidelines while staring up at the sky—one of her traditional expressions of despair.

For Kerber, the ominous signs began to flash bright red midway through her second-round match against Jelena Ostapenko. She had blown a 5-3 lead in the first set and lost it 7-5, then had gone down a quick break in the second, 0-2. When Ostapenko, who has been in top form in 2024, belted a pair of go-for-broke backhand return winners, Kerber threw her right hand in the air—one of her traditional signs of annoyance.

Osaka is 26 and Kerber is 36, but they’re at similar stages of their tennis lives at the moment. Each is a multiple Grand Slam champion and former No. 1 who took 2023 off and had a daughter—Shai (Osaka) and Liana (Kerber). Now they’re in the early stages of their comebacks. Osaka is ranked 287th, and Kerber is 607th, and neither has won more than two matches in a row so far. So far in Indian Wells, they’ve both fought to patch the holes in their confidence, and avoid the bad mental habits that have hurt them in the past.

Like everything in tennis, a successful comeback starts in the mind. The question for me with Kerber and Osaka is whether, and how often, they’ll be able to steer themselves in a productive mental direction when they face adversity. As successful as they’ve both been, that’s never a given with them. But their reactions so far in Indian Wells have been encouraging.

When Kerber loses, it’s often because she lets her negativity run rampant. She gets annoyed with her own misses, or her opponent’s line-clipping winners. She starts to rush, and looks like she’d rather be any place other than on a tennis court. Ostapenko, with her no-margin attack, was seemingly born to irritate Kerber, and when the German fell behind in the second set, I expected her to rush herself into an unhappy defeat.

Instead, Kerber used her frustration for good rather than bad. She fist-pumped, shook her racquet, and showed positive body language. That translated into her game; she became more aggressive, but in a tactical way, not a pull-the-ripcord way. She fought Ostapenko’s pace with pace of her own, and sent her service returns in surprising directions. Kerber was so loud after one winner that Ostapenko shot her a look from across the court. But the German was undeterred; after starting the year slowly, she needed this win and she got it.

“Having the combination of doing something I love and having [Liana] on my side, this is the most inspiration for me,” says Kerber, who is traveling with her daughter.

With Osaka, belief is everything, and it can swing wildly. When she has it, she thinks she can, and should, beat anyone. When she doesn’t, she seems to struggle to believe she can put more than balls in a row in the court. In part, this is because Osaka’s game is as powerful as anyone’s, but her shots don’t come with a lot of margin. Any swing can be a cold winner or a wild error.

As with her fellow comeback mom Kerber, Osaka has a lot of motivation to find ways to win at the moment. Maybe more so, because she’s a hard-court specialist, and the spring hard-court season is going to be over at the end of this month. Instead of staying in a funk against Errani, she dug in and won a series of long games that could have gone against her. The Italian made Osaka hit the extra shot and earn her points, but she was up to the task.

“I’m a very big perfectionist, and it’s kind of tough when you don’t see the results as quickly,” Osaka said last month when she was asked about getting back in shape after having a baby.

Osaka’s fitness is there, she’s made adjustments to her return, and she has been inspired by the fight she sees in another fellow tour mom, Victoria Azarenka. Most important, she still serves as well and hits with as much as pace as anyone in the women’s game.

Kerber and Osaka are sure to have their bad-habit days, their negative days, and their defeats in the months ahead. But they also seem up for the most important fight in tennis: To get the best from themselves again.