MELBOURNE, Australia — Whether or not Naomi Osaka claims the Australian Open championship – and make no mistake, she will be expected to win – this much seems certain: Tennis has a new dominant force.
Sure, it’s clearly possible that Osaka could be beaten by the 22nd-seeded American Jennifer Brady in the title match at Melbourne Park on Saturday (late Friday, 12:30 a.m. PST, ESPN).
Brady is, after all, emerging as a force on hard courts, too, thanks to a big serve and big forehand. The former UCLA standout pushed Osaka to three sets before losing to her in the U.S. Open semifinals in September, then shrugged off a two-week hard quarantine in Australia to reach her first Grand Slam final.
It is the third-seeded Osaka, though, who overpowered and overwhelmed Serena Williams in the semifinals Thursday (Wednesday PST).
Who is riding a 20-match winning streak dating to last season.
Who already has spent time at No. 1 in the rankings.
Who is seeking her second Australian Open title and fourth Slam trophy – and she is still only 23.
Like 23-time major champion Williams, there is a determination that Osaka manages to display when the finish line is near on their sport’s most important stages: She has run her record to a combined 11-0 in Grand Slam quarterfinals, semifinals and finals.
Osaka often speaks about wanting more consistency, whether that’s at lower-level WTA tournaments or at every Grand Slam event.
She does occasionally stumble early at the majors, such as a third-round exit a year ago as the defending champion in Australia or a first-round loss at Wimbledon in 2019.
But once she gets close to the end, she seals the deal.
“For me, I have this mentality that people don’t remember the runners-up. You might, but the winner’s name is the one that’s engraved,” explained Osaka, who was born in Japan to a Japanese mother and Haitian father before the family moved to New York when she was 3.
“I think I fight the hardest in the finals,” she continued. “I think that’s where you sort of set yourself apart.”
Williams had been 8-0 in Australian Open semifinals until Osaka put a stop to that by winning, 6-3, 6-4, reeling off the last eight points of the match after the second set was even at 4-all.
When they hugged at the net at the end, this is what went through Osaka’s mind: “Always a surreal moment, just to see her in real life, like, close up.”
Osaka has long viewed the 39-year-old Williams as an idol.
Their games are quite similar at the most foundational level: speedy serves, dangerous forehands and that steely attitude on the court.
Brady got a sense of that during the entertaining matchup in New York last fall against Osaka.
“She just puts a lot of pressure on you to serve well, because she’s holding serve in, like, 45 seconds. … She’s coming at you with a lot of power, so it also puts a lot of pressure on you to be aggressive and try to get the first strike. Otherwise, you’re the one running, and I don’t want to be running,” said Brady, a 25-year-old from Pennsylvania who helped lead UCLA to a national championship in 2014. “She just puts a lot of pressure on you to perform well.”
Brady acknowledged that she expects to deal with some nerves against Osaka this time.
That’s only natural, given the stakes.
The key will be limiting how much – and for how long – that affects her play.
“Listen, I don’t know how I’m going to feel on Saturday. I can say I can enjoy the moment and just try to play tennis and not really think too much about it. But there’s going to be moments, there’s going to be games, there’s going to be points, where I’m going to be thinking about, ‘Wow, this could be my first Grand Slam title,’” said Brady, who needed five match points in the last game to close her three-set semifinal win over Karolina Muchova.
“Yeah, I will definitely have those thoughts,” she said. “But it’s more just trying to control the emotions, really.”
After the unusual path Brady followed – two years of college tennis; just one tour-level title so far; that two-week hard quarantine upon arrival in Australia – perhaps it was fitting she took a circuitous route to her first major final.
Serving for the win against 25th-seeded Muchova in the semifinals, Brady needed to get through an 18-point game to close things out. Six deuces. Three break points. The five match points.
“It took a lot longer than I hoped for. There were a lot of extra points,” she said. “I was just so nervous. Couldn’t feel my legs. My arms were shaking. I was just hoping she would miss.”
Eventually, she pulled it out, dropping onto her back behind the baseline when the 6-4, 3-6, 6-4 result was settled in her favor thanks to a long forehand from Muchova.
Osaka remembers her U.S. Open battle with Brady well and respects her game.
“Easily one of my most memorable matches. It was just super-high quality throughout,” Osaka said of their meeting in New York. “For me, it’s not really surprising at all to see her in another semis or another final.”
For Brady, it was a bit unexpected.
Not that she discounted her chances: Seeing how she was able to hang with elite players in matches and practice sessions made her realize this sort of thing was possible.
“I mean, I wouldn’t say I’m in disbelief. … I have earned the right to be sitting here, to be playing in a final,” Brady said. “I just think it’s crazy to believe. … Watching a Grand Slam final, you look at two players and you’re, like, ‘Wow, that’s awesome that they’re in the final.’ You don’t think about what it feels like if you were in that situation. So I think just that it’s the tables have turned and I’m here.”
That might not have seemed too realistic in January.
Brady was one of 72 players entered in the Australian Open who were forced to isolate in their hotel rooms for at least 14 days – not allowed to leave, for any reason at all – because someone on chartered flights bringing them to the country last month tested positive for COVID-19 after they landed.
Actually, Brady thinks that might have helped because it forced her to “reset mentally,” she explained, and rest her body and mind.
She opted not to binge-watch TV shows while cooped up at the hotel, she explained, “because I knew if I started something, then I wouldn’t want to do anything else except just lay in bed and watch Netflix.”
How relatable is that?
Instead, Brady said, she passed the days by “FaceTiming a lot with other players that were in the quarantine.”
“It was more just trying to stay positive,” Brady said, “and know that there are worse things out there than being in a room.”
Her positive attitude helped. Brady’s coach, Michael Geserer, said Brady didn’t complain. Instead, she found a way to practice, hitting balls lobbed by her fitness trainer, Daniel Pohl.
“We approached it the right way,” Geserer said. “We were saying: ‘We can’t change the situation.’ We turned the mattress on the wall, and Daniel threw balls, so she could at least feel the ball on the racket. We tried just to make the best out of the situation.
“So far everything turned out pretty good.”
MEDVEDEV INTO MEN’S FINAL
Daniil Medvedev simply does not lose right now. Not to Top 10 opponents. Not to anyone, really. Certainly not to a drained Stefanos Tsitsipas in the men’s semifinals.
Now let’s see what happens against Novak Djokovic in Rod Laver Arena.
Medvedev made it to his second Grand Slam final as he pursues his first major championship, overwhelming fifth-seeded Tsitsipas, 6-4, 6-2, 7-5, on Friday (overnight PST) to run his winning streak to 20 matches. That includes a dozen victories against members of the Top 10.
Asked in an on-court TV interview to explain his success of late, Medvedev replied: “To be honest, I don’t have an answer. I was just working hard for it all my life.”
Tsitsipas came out flat, looking drained after his epic five-set, four-hour comeback victory over Rafael Nadal in the quarterfinals.
In Sunday’s final (late Saturday night ST), the fourth-seeded Medvedev will take on top-seeded Djokovic, who already owns eight Australian Open titles among his 17 Grand Slam trophies as he tries to gain on the men’s record of 20 shared by Nadal and Roger Federer.
Djokovic, who won his semifinal against 114th-ranked qualifier Aslan Karatsev on Thursday, is a combined 17-0 in semifinals and finals at Melbourne Park.
“First of all, I like that I don’t have a lot of pressure, because he never lost in eight times that he was here in the final. So it’s him that has all the pressure, getting (closer) to Roger or Rafa in the Grand Slams,” Medvedev said about Djokovic. “So I just hope that I’m going to get out here, show my best tennis. As we see, I can win some big names if I play good. That’s the main part. He has, for sure, more experience, but more things to lose than me.”
Medvedev was the runner-up to Nadal at the 2019 U.S. Open.
“It’s experience. It was my first Grand Slam final against one of the greatest,” said Medvedev, a 25-year-old from Russia. “Sunday, I’m going to come against one of the other greatest.”
He was terrific against Tsitsipas, a 22-year-old from Greece, getting broken just once and accruing 17 aces among his total 46 winners.
The latter count included a sliding backhand pass down the line to break in the next-to-last game, a shot Medvedev celebrated by raising both arms and waving his hands in a gesture that told the world, “Check me out!”
It took just 75 minutes for Medvedev to grab a two-set lead. He went up 3-1 in the third before Tsitsipas made things interesting, if only briefly, by taking three games in a row, including his only break of the match.
But Medvedev, his baseline defense exquisite, proved too tough.
“He’s a player who has unlocked pretty much everything in the game,” Tsitsipas said.
Down a set and a break in the second, Tsitsipas sat down at a changeover and chucked an open water bottle, causing a splash on the court that forced ball kids to scramble for towels to wipe up the mess. The petulant scene drew a side-eye from Medvedev.
Early in the third set, Medvedev told chair umpire James Keothavong that Tsitsipas’ father, who also coaches him, “is talking way too much” from the stands.
Tsitsipas and Medvedev already have a bit of an uncomfortable history, dating to their first meeting on tour at the 2018 Miami Open. Medvedev won that one – he started their rivalry with a 5-0 edge, although Tsitsipas claimed the most recent matchup before Friday’s – and it ended with some verbal volleying.
They tried to smooth things over through the media in recent days, including Tsitsipas backtracking from denigrating Medvedev’s style of play.
“Might have said in the past that he plays boring, but I don’t really think he plays boring,” Tsitsipas said this week. “He just plays extremely smart and outplays you.”
A pretty good summation of what happened in the semifinal.
Melbourne has a sizable Greek population, and Tsitsipas got a much warmer greeting, replete with flapping blue-and-white flags, when he arrived at the court; Medvedev actually heard some jeers.
Attendance at the stadium was capped at 50% capacity – about 7,500 – when fans were allowed to return to the tournament after being barred for five days during a local lockdown due to a rise in COVID-19 cases.
As much as the crowd tried to boost Tsitsipas, he never really got going until that late push that ultimately led nowhere.
“I’ve proven that I have the level to beat these players. It’s not that I haven’t,” said Tsitsipas, who fell to 0-3 in Grand Slam semifinals, with the other losses coming against Nadal and Djokovic. “Let’s hope for something better next time. I really hope it comes.”
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