With another Slam, Osaka cements numero uno slot in women’s tennis
The Australian Open win for a fourth Slam reinforces her status as the leader of new age women’s tennis
MELBOURNE: Japan’s Naomi Osaka dismissed Jennifer Brady in straight sets to win her fourth Grand Slam title at the Australian Open on Saturday and underline her new status as the dominant force in women’s tennis.
Osaka, 23, swept past America’s Brady 6-4, 6-3 in 77 minutes to win her second straight major crown and extend a 21-match winning streak that stretches back more than a year.
The world number three, who will rise to second in the rankings, becomes only the third player after Monica Seles and Roger Federer to win her first four major finals.
By clinching back-to-back majors for the second time, the reigning US Open champion has won half of the Slams she has contested since her breakthrough 2018 US Open victory against Serena Williams.
After a tight first set, Osaka controlled the second to win 6-4, 6-3 in 77 minutes.
MUMBAI: You can sense two tennis players are going toe to toe on court when both let out the first real drop of emotion bottled up amid the nerves of a Grand Slam final around the same time. That moment in the Australian Open women’s singles title clash between Naomi Osaka and Jennifer Brady came in the eighth game of the opening set.
Osaka came rushing to the net to put away a forehand winner at 0-15. “C’mon,” she muttered. Saving a break point and a long service game littered with a few unforced errors, it was Brady’s turn for a “C’mon” at the end of it, a touch louder than Osaka’s. It was 4-4. It was a tight tussle. One loose shot put it to bed. Serving for 5-all, Brady went from 40-15 to facing a set point. She delivered a big first serve, which came looping back and sat up nicely inside the service box for the American to hit it anywhere on the open court. Her feeble forehand died into the net. Game, Osaka. Set, Osaka. Soon enough, championship, Osaka.
The third seed broke away to win the next four games in the second set, and soon after the 2021 Australian Open title, beating 22nd seed Brady 6-4, 6-3 in Saturday’s final that pit a threetime Slam winner against a first-time finalist. Osaka is also fast breaking away from the current field in women’s tennis with a vast depth.
This is the young Japanese’s fourth singles Grand Slam title in four years; among the women still competing on the professional circuit only two can flaunt more—the Williams sisters Serena (23) and Venus (7)— while Kim Clijsters, who last year made another comeback at 37, too has four. Germany’s Angelique Kerber, 33, stands the nearest to Osaka among the modern competitors with three Slams, but hasn’t won any—or come close to winning, safe to say—since her 2018 Wimbledon triumph. With the Williams sisters in the twilight of their glossy careers and the breakthrough young stars (Ashleigh Barty, Bianca Andreescu and Iga Swiatek) not yet able to add their one-slam runs, Osaka stands head, shoulders and body above her contemporaries.
Incredibly, Osaka has only entered four Grand Slam finals so far, winning them all. No woman has done that in the Open era since Monica Seles. No man has done that in the Open era since Roger Federer. “I hope that I can have one grain of how their career has unfolded,” Osaka said in the post-match press conference about that feat. “But you can only wish and you can only just keep going down your own path.”
At 23, Osaka has already seen plenty in that path—from touching the sky with her first Slam at the 2018 US Open to finding rock bottom after the thirdround shocker to teen Coco Gauff in her Australian Open title defence last year; from fighting back tears in that emotional and controversial 2018 trophy ceremony involving Serena in New York to fighting for the cause of social and racial injustice and sexism around the world.
All along, she has shown signs of greatness, on and off the court. Osaka has kissed a Grand Slam trophy at least once each year since 2018 (twice each in the US and Australia), has won four of the last nine Slams and is yet to lose a quarter-final, semi-final or final at the highest level of the sport. Bigger the stakes, bigger the performance.
Like on Saturday. Once Brady gift-wrapped the first set to her with that easy miss on set point, Osaka was in no mood to return the favour. Until then, Osaka was made to sweat and stretch from the baseline. For a battle between big servers, it was ironic that a couple of double faults by Brady and one by Osaka to go with some weak second serves meant the two traded breaks in the fourth and fifth games.
Brady got Osaka rushed with her powerful baseline game, inducing the errors to nullify her winners. While their game styles were similar, they adopted different tactical approaches to attack the second serve—osaka stood inside the baseline to pounce on it; Brady gave herself more space and time to build her ascendancy. It proved to be decisive in a set that had little to separate the two: Osaka won 56% of points on second serve to Brady’s 43%.
Osaka started to pierce the acutest of angles from her quality backhand in the second set while Brady, perhaps deflated with the anticlimactic finish to her fight in the first set, began swinging a lot more and missing a lot more. Osaka raced to 4-0 in quick time. While Osaka’s winners count remained static, eight in each set, her unforced errors dropped from 15 to nine in the second. The rare occasion that Brady had her say in the second set was when she recovered one of the two breaks to reduce the gap to 4-1, then held her serve to love and smacked a forehand winner with a brilliant one-two play in the eighth game that got even Osaka to applaud.
Minutes later, the applause came from the crowd at the Rod Laver Arena for their latest Australian Open champion, who reached there while dropping just one set but warding off match points against Garbine Muguruza in the fourth round. After that, there was no stopping Osaka, now on a run of 21 victories on the trot in matches she hasn’t pulled out of. This might take some stopping too.