Naomi Osaka overpowers Jennifer Brady to win second Australian Open
- Straight-sets success secures fourth major tennis crown
- Osaka prevails 6-4, 6-3 at Melbourne Park
In this unending pandemic and a scattered, disjointed year of tennis, there has been one consistent sight throughout: Naomi Osaka exhibiting her greatness under suffocating pressure. She is already a player whose profile is in the process of transcending her sport but, most importantly, she has the résumé to back it up and it keeps on growing.
In a tight, gripping contest when she struggled and then soared, Osaka became a four-time grand slam champion at 23 by beating Jennifer Brady 6-4, 6-3 to win her second Australian Open.
The achievements she has unlocked in the process are startling. Osaka is the first woman to win her first four grand slam finals of her career since Monica Seles in 1991. She is the seventh woman in the Open era to save match point en route to the Australian Open title after her fourth-round comeback against Garbiñe Muguruza from 3-5, 15-40, when she saved the first match point with a 119mph ace and hit zero unforced errors in the final 22 points.
Who knows if she even remembers what it feels like to lose – that is a sensation she has not experienced in more than a year, with 21 successive wins. Back then, two poor losses, including one to a 15-year-old Coco Gauff at this tournament, forced her to reevaluate her entire approach to the sport. Consider it a job well done. Osaka is now 33-2 in hard court grand slams since 2018, winning four of the past six titles.
These have already been such career-defining months for Osaka as she consolidated her spot at the top of tennis and learned the power of her voice away from it by speaking out against racism and police brutality.
Although she will rise only from No 3 to No 2 thanks to temporary alterations to the rankings during the pandemic, this can now be said with certainty: she is the best player in the world again.
In Osaka’s previous grand slam finals, she faced three multiple grand slam champions and wondered before the match how she would handle the pressure as favourite.
In the beginning, it was complicated. From 3-1 up, Osaka suddenly looked frail. She began to catch her toss in the wind and her first serves flew beyond the service line. It was her opponent who dictated more rallies. As Brady radiated energy and verve, thus began a series of crucial games she led but could not close.
At 3-3 on Osaka’s serve, Brady forced her to 15-30 before Osaka landed two consecutive service winners. Brady then created a break point at 4-4, 30-40 after a wonderful, flicked one-handed backhand lob winner. Osaka saved the break point with a bold cross-court forehand winner and then she did just enough to hold serve.
Brady led 40-15 at 4-5 on her serve before losing four points in a row to concede the set. And that was it. From haemorrhaging errors and falling 4-4 30-40 down, Osaka won five games in a row and never looked back.
The sequence reflected a common trait of the greatest champions: the opportunities they offer are limited and any opponent who fails to take advantage of them will pay.
WHO IS Naomi Osaka
Naomi Osaka (大坂 なおみ, Ōsaka Naomi, Japanese pronunciation: [o̞ːsäkä näo̞mi], born October 16, 1997) is a Japanese professional tennis player. Osaka has been ranked No. 1 by the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA), and is the first Asian player to hold the top ranking in singles. She is a four-time Grand Slam singles champion, and is the reigning champion at the US Open and the Australian Open. Her seven titles on the WTA Tour also include two at the Premier Mandatory level. At the 2018 US Open and the 2019 Australian Open, Osaka won her first two Grand Slam singles titles in back-to-back Grand Slam tournaments, and is the first player to achieve this feat since Jennifer Capriati in 2001.
Born in Japan to a Haitian father and a Japanese mother, Osaka has lived and trained in the United States since she was three years old. She came to prominence at the age of sixteen when she defeated former US Open champion Samantha Stosur in her WTA Tour debut at the 2014 Stanford Classic. Two years later, she reached her first WTA final at the 2016 Pan Pacific Open in Japan to enter the top 50 of the WTA rankings. Osaka made her breakthrough into the upper echelon of women’s tennis in 2018 when she won her first WTA title at the Indian Wells Open. Later in the year, she defeated 23-time Grand Slam singles champion Serena Williams in the final of the US Open to become the first Japanese player to win a Grand Slam singles title. Since 2018, she has won a Grand Slam singles title in four consecutive years.
Osaka is one of the most marketable athletes in the world, having been ranked eighth among all athletes in endorsement income in 2020. She was also the highest-earning female athlete of all time by annual income that year. Osaka has gained significant recognition as an activist, having showcased support for the Black Lives Matter movement in conjunction with her matches. She was named one of the 2020 Sports Illustrated Sportspersons of the Year for her activism largely as part of her US Open championship run, and was also included on Time‘s annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world in both 2019 and 2020. On the court, Osaka has an aggressive playing style with a powerful serve that can reach 201 kilometres per hour (125 mph).
