4 for 4: Osaka remains perfect in Slam finals
MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA» The most uncomfortable moment for Naomi Osaka on Saturday night was not when she faced a key break point in the first set of her Australian Open women’s singles final against Jennifer Brady. Nor was it when she was serving for the match in the second.
It came two hours after she closed out her 6-4, 6-3 victory at Rod Laver Arena. At the start of her news conference, Craig Tiley, the head of Tennis Australia, handed Osaka a flute of Champagne and proposed a toast to her second Australian Open crown and fourth Grand Slam title.
Osaka, 23, brought the glass to her lips and tentatively took a sip, trying unsuccessfully to keep her expression neutral. She has never developed a taste for alcohol, she had explained earlier in the tournament, because she was told as a child that it was bad for her.
“Like it’s ruining your body or your liver,” she said. “I just want to give myself an advantage for as long as I can.”
Osaka, the pride of Japan who spent much of her childhood in Florida, would appear to have a leg upon there st of her competition in an increasingly deep wom- en’ s game. She is 4 for 4 in Grand Slam finals, a feat achieved in the Open era only by Monica Seles on her way to nine total championships and Roger Federer on his wayto20.
“That’s very amazing company,” said Osaka, who held her childhood idol, the 23-time Grand Slam champion Serena Williams, to the same number of games, seven, mustered by Brady, a 25-yearold in her first major final.
She added, “You can only just keeping going down your own path.”
Osaka, who won her second U.S. Open title this past September, is halfway to a Naomi Slam. She is unbeaten in her past 21 matches. Her most recent loss in an individual competition came in the third round of this tournament last year when she was upset by the American teenager Coco Gauff, a defeat that weighed on Osaka’s mind before she took the court against Brady, who was a decided underdog, as Gauff had been.
“I have been in the position that she is in to go into the first Slam,” Osaka said, referring to Brady. “Of course I know the nerves that come with that. But then I was thinking on the other side, for me, I wonder if I’m expected to do better because I have been in Slam finals before. So there was actually a lot of nerves with that.”
Both players looked nervous in the early going, missing first serves and racking up roughly two unforced errors for every winner. With Osaka serving at 4-4 in the first set, Brady chipped away at Osaka’s fortress until she had opened a sliver of daylight at 30-40.
On break point, Osaka missed her first serve, directed a second attempt at Brady’s body and then took the point with a forehand winner, one of four she’d record in the match. She won the next two points to seal the opening shut.
Nobody in the game right now is a better pacesetter than Osaka, who improved to 45-1 in Grand Slam matches when she wins the first set. She raced to a 4-0 lead in the second, needing 36 minutes to close out the match.
“She played really well when she had to,” Brady conceded. “She hit good shots when she needed them.”