Kicking off her U.S. Open title defense, Naomi Osaka couldn’t calm her nerves — but she didn’t let them stop her.

The reigning champion got past her jitters and outlasted Russian Anna Blinkova with a 6-4, 6-7 (5), 6-2 first-round win at Arthur Ashe Stadium.

“I felt nervous. For me it’s definitely a new feeling. Never had to come into a tournament as — well, come into a Grand Slam — [as champion],” Osaka said. “The amount of nerves that I felt [Tuesday] was completely different. … I’m really glad that’s over.

“It was kind of consistent throughout the entire match, which was very strange for me, because normally it would be the first couple of games or the first set. But, yeah, it never really went away.”

Neither did Osaka.

It was her first match at Ashe Stadium since last year’s final win over Serena Williams, when the chorus of boos from the crowd left her in tears. Tuesday, however, they showed love to the local favorite, who was raised on Long Island by a Haitian father and Japanese mother. They cheered Osaka from the start as she motioned in acknowledgment.

Then she went out and dug herself a 4-1 hole against the 84th-ranked Blinkova before ripping off 10 straight points to jump back in the match.

Despite a left knee issue that forced her to retire from the Western & Southern Open in Cincinnati just 10 days earlier — and had her wearing a black brace — Osaka took the next five games to win the first set.

She wasted match point in the second, however, and dropped the tiebreaker.

But Osaka fended off a couple of break points and then broke Blinkova with a powerful forehand for a 3-1 lead in the third set. She clinched the match with a backhand winner, showing that if her knee injury isn’t completely behind her, it’s at least kind-of, sort-of getting there.

“Hmmm. What do I say to this? It’s in front of me and it’s behind me,” Osaka said with a giggle. “I don’t know. It’s something that I’m thinking about it, but I’m actually not thinking about it.”

Naomi-isms aside, Osaka will face Poland’s Magda Linette in the second round. And she insisted she doesn’t feel that she’s carrying a target on her back as the defending champ.

“I don’t feel a bull’s-eye. I feel like at this point everyone that I play is going to play really well, and I just need to learn how to cope with that and expect that going into the matches,” Osaka said. “I feel like I’ve been doing a better job of that recently.

“For me, of course there’s a lot of inner nerves. … People expect me to be nervous at this point. And that’s what’s the most concerning part, because I like to prove people wrong. … I don’t want to give people that [nervous] look. I want to be super calm, and I know I wasn’t calm. But yeah, I want to be, like, very confident in my abilities.”