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Naomi Osaka once again excelled in women’s tennis on Saturday, coming back to defeat Victoria Azarenka and win her second US Open.
Osaka’s 1-6, 6-3, 6-3 victory capped a streak of powerful play and political activism in New York. She wore seven different masks with different names for each of her parties to honor the black victims of violence. She walked the field on Saturday wearing a mask named after Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old boy shot and killed in Cleveland by a white police officer in 2014.
“The point was to get people to start talking,” Osaka said at the award ceremony.
Osaka’s victory on Saturday came under radically different conditions than his first title race in New York in 2018.
In that final, she defeated Serena Williams in a tumultuous straight-set match that turned ugly when Williams clashed at Arthur Ashe Stadium with chair umpire Carlos Ramos, who called three code of conduct violations against Williams.
The crowd, unclear on the rules and upset over Williams’ treatment, booed during the awards ceremony, leaving Osaka in tears shortly after her first Grand Slam singles title.
But Ashe Stadium was nearly empty on Saturday, as it has been during this unusual US Open, where fans were not allowed due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The little crowd there never became a factor, and although Osaka started very slowly against Azarenka, she gradually found her rank and became the first player in 26 years to win a United States women’s singles final after losing the first set.
The last player to lead it was Arantxa Sánchez Vicario, who came back to defeat Steffi Graf in 1994.
Osaka, 22, who represents Japan and is based in the United States, is 3-0 in Grand Slam singles finals. With her great serve, powerful groundstrokes and improved fitness, she looked ready to take command of the women’s game when she won the 2018 US Open and the 2019 Australian Open.
But surprisingly he parted ways with his coach Sascha Bajin shortly after that win in Australia and struggled to regain the same brilliant form.
Last year, while defending her US Open title, Osaka was defeated in the fourth round by Belinda Bencic. At the Australian Open in January, she played a game full of errors and was teased in the third round by Coco Gauff, then 15, an American who Osaka had outright beaten at the 2019 US Open.
Osaka was in obvious disarray, but then came the five-month tour hiatus due to the pandemic. Osaka, the biracial daughter of a Haitian father and Japanese mother, became deeply involved in the social justice movement, attended a rally in Minneapolis, and spoke out on social media and elsewhere.
When he returned to the tour for a doubleheader for two tournaments in New York, with the players in a controlled environment, he continued his activism. He initially refused to play his semi-final match at the Western & Southern Open the week before the US Open, in solidarity with professional basketball, baseball and soccer athletes protesting against systemic racism and police violence.
Tour officials responded by canceling the entire day of play and Osaka reached the final, retiring with a left hamstring injury before facing Azarenka.
His hamstring was still tied on Saturday when he returned to beat Azarenka in the final.
Azarenka, 31, of Belarus, lost to Serena Williams in the classic US Open finals in 2012 and 2013, but rallied to defeat Williams, 38, in a fiercely contested semi-final on Thursday and started the season just as convincingly. Saturday.
Azarenka wasn’t seeded, but she wasn’t a tennis outsider. She was No. 1 for 51 weeks in 2012 and 2013 and won two Australian Open singles titles before Williams reasserted herself at the top of the women’s game and Azarenka fell back.
She had injuries, painful breakups with boyfriends and coaches, and, most traumatic, a long and bitter custody dispute over her now 3-year-old son Leo, who stayed with Azarenka, his mother, and her team in a private home that he rented near the city. USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center for the tournament.
She would have been the first mother to win a Grand Slam singles title since Kim Clijsters won the Australian Open in 2011. As Azarenka dominated the first set, hitting almost every first serves in play and controlling the rallies, it looked like she could win. in a hurry. Osaka dropped her racket at one point in frustration when her unforced errors piled up.
“I thought it would be very embarrassing to lose this in less than an hour,” Osaka said, explaining that she told herself to “stop having a really bad attitude.”
Her mood and play improved dramatically as the final progressed, while Azarenka was unable to maintain her level of play. After losing the second set and falling behind 1-4 in the third, Azarenka made one more surge, struggling through a game of five two to maintain serve and then breaking Osaka’s serve in the next game to close the gap to 3. -4.
But at 30-30 with Azarenka’s serve in the next game, the match turned for the better when Osaka won a high-speed rally to get a break point and then converted it when Azarenka lined up a forehand, it was for a winner. inside out and missed wide.
Osaka, who has yet to lose a grand finale, closed out the victory by maintaining serve when Azarenka’s last shot, a backhand, hit the net. Osaka played rackets with Azarenka at the net, another sign of these changing times, and then she lay on her back on the court and took a moment to savor the moment.
“I always see everyone collapse after match point, but I always think you can get hurt, so I wanted to do it safely,” he explained.
That seemed like an appropriate approach in a tournament where staying safe was the top priority, as players were regularly screened for the virus and restricted to their accommodation and tournament site.
“These are not easy times in the world right now,” Azarenka said, holding back tears in her post-match speech in the nearly empty stadium. “So I am very grateful for the opportunity to play in front of millions of people who watch television, but sadly not here.”
Osaka has quickly become one of the biggest stars in international sports and was the highest paid female athlete in the past year, supplanting Williams on the Forbes list with estimated earnings of $ 37.4 million.
She and her parents followed the Williams family model as they developed their baseline power game. As with your role model, it’s very hard to resist when that game is clicking. She had her shaky moments in New York: she required three sets in four of her seven matches, including a high-quality semifinal victory over American Jennifer Brady.
But Osaka, with the help of her new coach, Wim Fissette, managed to produce her most compelling tennis when she needed it most: boldly finding the lines with her serves and hitting groundstrokes at critical moments.
A champion again, she made her point unequivocally on and off the court.
