Osaka, Naomi (1997- )

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      At the French Open, Naomi Osaka Seeks Comfort on Clay and No Interviews

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      The world No. 2 has said she won’t talk to journalists at the tournament, which begins on Sunday, but she faces a bigger obstacle: her record on clay.PARIS — While other major players juggled practice and media commitments ahead of the French Open, Naomi Osaka focused only on practice this week.She was on court at Roland Garros early on Friday, hitting with the former No. 1 Angelique Kerber on the red clay, where Osaka does not feel entirely at ease. During breaks, she sat in a chair staring straight ahead as her coach, Wim Fissette, crouched by her side in conversation.The second-seeded Osaka is tennis’s biggest new star and now the highest-paid female athlete in the world, ahead of Serena Williams. Osaka has won four Grand Slam singles titles, two more than any other woman since 2018. But the French Open, the only Grand Slam tournament played on clay, will be a big challenge. She did not get past the third round in four previous appearances, and so she planned to approach the event differently: Osaka recently announced that, to protect her mental health, she would not “do any press” during the tournament, which begins Sunday.It remains unclear what her news-media abstention will entail. Osaka, who represents Japan and lives in the United States, is under contract with the Japanese broadcaster Wowow. Will she choose to speak with that network and other broadcasters? Will she give post-match interviews on court? Or will she simply choose to skip the traditional post-match news conference designed to serve a wide variety of outlets?Answers were not immediately forthcoming, and Stuart Duguid, her agent, declined to comment when asked for clarification. What is clear is that Osaka chose not to take part in the official media day on Friday, which made her the exception. The participants included the women’s No. 1, Ashleigh Barty; the reigning women’s champion, Iga Swiatek; and the 13-time men’s champion, Rafael Nadal. Already an immovable object at Roland Garros, Nadal now has a permanent presence after the unveiling this week of a steel statue of him ripping his trademark forehand.Nadal and his fellow players addressed numerous topics on Friday, and most were asked about Osaka’s decision. None criticized her choice, but all said they would take a different tack.Rafael Nadal, the No. 3 seed, practiced on Court Philippe Chatrier.Pete Kiehart for The New York Times“As sports people, we need to be ready to accept the questions and try to produce an answer, no?” Nadal said. “I understand her, but in the other hand, for me, without the press, without the people who normally are traveling, who are writing the news and achievements that we are having around the world, probably we will not be the athletes that we are today. We aren’t going to have the recognition that we have around the world, and we will not be that popular, no?”Nadal, who will turn 35 on Thursday, is a creature of habit who began giving interviews as a preteen prodigy. The landscape has changed dramatically since he won his first French Open title in 2005. Athletes now speak through social media, but the surprise announcement from Osaka, 23, is not all about a generation gap.Barty, from Australia, is 25, and Swiatek, from Poland, is 19. Both are past French Open champions, and both are big stars in their home countries.“In my opinion, press is kind of part of the job,” Barty said. “We know what we sign up for as professional tennis players. I can’t really comment on what Naomi is feeling or her decisions.”Worn down by expectations and the intensity of professional tennis, Barty took a nearly two-year break in her career before returning in 2016.“At times, press conferences are hard, of course, but it’s also not something that bothers me,” she said. “I’ve never had problems answering questions or being completely honest with you guys.”In a statement on Friday, the WTA emphasized how seriously it took the issue of mental health, but also stressed that media obligations are part of the job.“The WTA welcomes a dialogue with Naomi (and all players) to discuss possible approaches that can help support an athlete as they manage any concerns related to mental health, while also allowing us to deliver upon our responsibilities to the fans and public,” the statement said. “Professional athletes have a responsibility to their sport and their fans to speak to the media surrounding their competition, allowing them the opportunity to share their perspective and tell their story.”Swiatek, like the young Canadian Bianca Andreescu, has prioritized the mental side of her game, using sports psychology from an early age and hiring a performance psychologist, Daria Abramowicz, as part of her team.Swiatek said on Friday that she did not think taking part in news conferences was difficult or had affected her mental health.Iga Swiatek during hitting practice at the Australian Open with her performance psychologist, Daria Abramowicz.Alana Holmberg for The New York Times“I feel that the media is really important as well because they are giving us, you are giving us, a platform to talk about our lives and our perspective,” she said. “It’s also important, because not everybody is a professional athlete, and not everybody knows what we are dealing with on court. It’s good to speak about that. We have like two ways to do that: media and social media. It’s good to use both of these platforms and to educate people.”What social media lacks — unless an athlete chooses to regularly answer questions from followers — is dialogue.Tennis news conferences are not what they used to be. They are generally shorter and much lighter on inquiries about tactics, technique and the match that just finished. But they remain an opportunity for journalists to ask questions on any subject. They also allow a chance for those who report regularly about tennis to develop a rapport with the athletes and better understand their personalities, psyches and, as Swiatek smartly alluded to, their motivations and intentions.Billy Jean King, who won 12 Grand Slam singles titles, said that she was torn over Osaka’s decision.“While it’s important that everyone has the right to speak their truth, I have always believed that as professional athletes we have a responsibility to make ourselves available to the media,” King wrote in an email. “In our day, without the press, nobody would have known who we are or what we thought. There is no question they helped build and grow our sport to what it is today. I acknowledge things are very different now with social media and everyone having an immediate ability to speak their truth. The media still play an important role in telling our story. There is no question that the media needs to respect certain boundaries. But at the end of the day, it is important we respect each other and we are in this together.”It is true that some of the world’s most prominent athletes do not give postgame interviews as a matter of course. Soccer players in Europe’s top leagues generally grant limited access. But top tennis players are hardly alone in speaking after every match. Star golfers usually are interviewed after each round. Top track and field athletes and Alpine skiers do interviews after each race. The Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, now retired, would win in less than 10 seconds and then spend half an hour or more running a gantlet of television, radio and print journalists.Osaka, with her long list of sponsors, has many new commercial partners who have a stake in her maintaining a high profile. But she already gives very few individual interviews and has reached a level of celebrity that she can probably maintain through social media, her sponsors and coverage of her matches.Osaka with members of her coaching staff at her practice Friday.Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesOsaka is subject to a fine of up to $20,000 for each news conference she skips at Roland Garros. She explained in her announcement that she had seen many instances of players breaking down after a loss in the interview room. She said that players were often asked questions that “bring doubt into our minds, and I’m just not going to subject myself to people that doubt me.”The doubts are legitimate, however, when it comes to her clay-court results.Osaka, who will play her first-round match on Sunday against Patricia Maria Tig, is a great hardcourt player but not yet a proven threat on clay or grass. She has won two United States Opens and two Australian Opens, all on cushioned acrylic hard courts. On clay, she has a career singles record of just 19-16 and has yet to reach a tour final. After winning the U.S. Open in 2020, Osaka skipped the French Open, which was postponed to September and October because of the pandemic. This year, in her only tournaments on clay, she lost in the second round and then in the first.“Her challenges are lack of confidence with sliding and movement, and her shots don’t carry as much weight on clay as on a hard court,” said Pam Shriver, the ESPN analyst who was a U.S. Open finalist in 1978. “Her serve is also not as much of a weapon.”Osaka, who tends to aggressively rip her returns, is prone to making more errors on clay than on hard courts, where the bounces are true and shots are easier to time correctly. Players like Swiatek and Barty get more net clearance on their groundstrokes than Osaka, and Barty can change pace and trajectories more effectively with her crisply sliced backhand.But power players with relatively flat groundstrokes and sliding issues have solved the clay-court riddle, particularly Maria Sharapova, who once derided herself as a “cow on ice” on the surface but ultimately won two French Opens.“It takes time to develop, and it takes many hours on the practice courts for you to feel that your weight is underneath you on clay,” said José Higueras, the veteran coach who guided Michael Chang and Jim Courier to French Open titles. “If you hit exactly the same ball on a hardcourt that is a pretty decent shot, on clay it may not be that decent, because the other player has a little more time to adjust.”On Sunday, Osaka will try again to adjust her game in Paris. Win or lose, she plans to skip the news conference, and though her decision has stirred resistance, it will also stir reflection. More

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      Naomi Osaka Says She Won’t Talk to Journalists at the French Open

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      Citing mental health concerns, the world No. 2 wrote on Instagram Wednesday that she will accept any fines levied for not making herself available to reporters.Naomi Osaka, the four-time Grand Slam singles champion, announced Wednesday that she will not do any news conferences at the French Open because she said they can too often be damaging to the mental health of tennis players.Osaka, 23, is one of the game’s biggest stars. She made the announcement on Instagram four days before the start of the year’s second Grand Slam.Osaka said she had watched too many players break down during news conferences and leave the dais in tears. She said the process felt to her like “kicking a person while they are down.”“If the organizations think they can keep saying, ‘do press or you’re going to get fined,’ and continue to ignore the mental health of the athletes that are the centerpiece of their cooperation then I just gotta laugh,” Osaka wrote. She said she would accept any fines levied against her for skipping the news conferences and requested that the funds be donated to a charity dedicated to mental health.Spokespeople for the WTA, the women’s professional tennis tour, and the French Open were not immediately available for comment.Osaka made an estimated $55 million last year in prize money and endorsements.She is hardly the first athlete to decline to speak with the press. The N.F.L.’s Marshawn Lynch often refused to speak with reporters when he was a star running back with the Seattle Seahawks. He famously sat in front of microphones and refused to engage questions ahead of the Super Bowl following the 2014 regular season. He garnered tens of thousands of dollars in fines during the playoffs that year.Ted Williams, the Hall of Fame baseball player who played his entire career with the Red Sox, also had an icy relationship with the Boston media and did not grant interviews for extended periods.While some tennis tournaments have different rules, in general players must appear at a post-match news conference at a Grand Slam event if a journalist requests their presence, whether they win or lose. Fines for refusing are often little more than a few thousand dollars. In 2015, Venus Williams was fined $3,000 for skipping a news conference after a loss at the French Open. She and her sister, Serena, were fined $4,000 each in 2010 for skipping a news conference at Wimbledon.The French Open takes place on clay, which is considered Osaka’s worst surface. She is not expected to win the tournament and could be upset in an early round. She has never made it past the third round in Paris.Attending a news conference, regardless of the outcome of a match, is considered an obligation tennis players fulfill to promote their sport, which has struggled to maintain coverage in some markets in recent years as the budgets of news organizations have been slashed.Billie Jean King, the Hall of Fame player who helped create the women’s pro tour, has spoken about visiting the sports editors in the markets in which she played to beg them to send sportswriters to cover matches during the tour’s early years and the importance of players speaking with the press to promote the sport.“I like writers,” King said during a recent interview. “Always have.”Osaka’s announcement comes three months after Serena Williams left a news conference in tears following a loss at the Australian Open. Williams left the podium following an innocuous question from a veteran Australian tennis journalist about her level of play and her unforced errors after a semifinal loss to Osaka, who later won the tournament.“I don’t know. I’m done,” Williams said before abruptly leaving the room.It is not clear whether Osaka will also refuse to do television interviews on the court after her matches. Those interviews have become a staple of Grand Slam play and are generally not confrontational. Except in the finals, only the winner of the match is interviewed for television on the court.The question now is whether any players will follow Osaka’s lead and whether tennis officials will accede to her pressure and change the requirements.Osaka is one of the most influential players in the world. Last year, tennis officials suspended play at the Western & Southern Open, a United States Open tuneup, after Osaka announced that she would default her semifinal match to draw attention to the issue of police violence against Black people following the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wis.The suspension of play, a move that several sports undertook as athletes threatened a boycott, allowed Osaka to remain in the tournament. She won her postponed semifinal match and then defaulted the final because of an injury.Days later, she began her triumphant quest to win her second U.S. Open championship. She walked to the court for each match wearing a mask with the name of a different person of color who had been a victim of racist violence.In general, Osaka has a cordial relationship with the press, though she keeps journalists, especially those she does not know, at a distance and rarely grants interviews, even to the biggest news organizations, though she has become a staple of fashion magazine covers. She said her decision to skip news conferences was not a personal attack on the French Open or the handful of journalists who have interviewed her since her younger years, “so I have a friendly relationship with most of them.” More

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      A Big Tennis Tournament Is About to Happen in Miami. Really.

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      The Miami Open is the lone significant North American tennis event before late summer, and a glimpse of what the sport might look like for the foreseeable future.There is a significant tennis tournament beginning its main draw in Miami this week. It is one of the most important annual events in the sport, attracting hundreds of players from all over the world, including multiple Grand Slam winners, competing for one of the largest prize purses of the year.So why doesn’t it feel that way?Maybe it’s because several of the biggest names in the sport — including the grand troika of Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer in the men’s game, plus Serena Williams — are skipping the event. Or because attendance will be limited to a maximum of 1,000 spectators a day, compared with nearly 400,000 over two weeks in 2019, despite state rules in Florida that would allow far more.Maybe it’s because the Miami Open is taking place without the opening act of the March winter hard court swing, the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif., which officials in the state wanted no part of in the winter when infection rates were surging in Southern California.Or maybe it’s because the Miami Open is a microcosm of tennis in 2021 — an unpredictable puzzle of player scheduling, travel advisories and health precautions in a season that has forced players to set priorities in a way they never have before. Many, especially the biggest stars, now view tournaments not simply as a means to compete or a chance for a paycheck but for whether an event fits into their broader life.“It’s so many different reasons,” James Blake, the former player who is the tournament director in Miami, said when asked what has influenced players’ decisions to play or skip the event. “As a former tour player, I can tell you are programmed to want to compete against the best players in the world. That is always your main motivation.”Except when it isn’t. Williams withdrew Sunday, announcing she had not fully recovered from recent oral surgery. Djokovic, who is the top-ranked men’s player and recovering from a torn abdominal muscle, pulled out Friday afternoon. Djokovic’s management agency, the sports and entertainment conglomerate, W.M.E.-I.M.G., owns the Miami Open, but that was not enough for him to make the trip. He announced on Twitter that he had “decided to use this precious time at home to stay with my family. With all restrictions, I need to find balance in my time on tour and at home.”Daniil Medvedev, the world No. 2 and a 2021 Australian Open finalist, is playing, as are the rising stars Stefanos Tsitsipas and Alexander Zverev. But the women’s draw, which includes Naomi Osaka, Ashleigh Barty and Simona Halep, may provide much of the heat.Nadal announced earlier this month that he was skipping Miami to continue healing his sore back and to prepare for the spring clay-court season, during which he usually excels.Roger Federer, the defending champion in Miami who returned to professional tennis earlier this month after two knee surgeries and a 14-month hiatus, said his goal is to be 100 percent healthy for Wimbledon in late June. A two-week jaunt to the United States for a single hard court event didn’t make sense. He also has not committed to playing much on clay this season.Roger Federer won’t be at this year’s Miami Open to defend his 2019 title.Rhona Wise/EPA, via ShutterstockAustria’s Dominic Thiem, the 2020 United States Open champion, is slumping and taking a pass. Stan Wawrinka of Switzerland, a three-time Grand Slam winner, said he was too tired. Nick Kyrgios lives in Australia, which has strict quarantine rules for travelers, and has yet to figure out how much tennis he wants to play this year.It is the new normal of tennis. To play or not to play is a complicated question, and an unexpected result of that is Miami foreshadows what tennis will look like eventually. No Big Three. No Serena Williams.“It’s always nice to have two of the biggest names in sports on your air, but there is so much talent out there and that gives the chance for different stories to be told,” said Ken Solomon, chief executive of The Tennis Channel, which will air 125 hours of live coverage of the event in the United States. “We get 128 phenomenal athletes competing in this thing, you don’t start thinking about who is not there.”For months in the United States, many sports have more or less proceeded, even as most people faced significant limitations on travel and contact with those outside their households. The N.F.L. held a Super Bowl with 22,000 fans, the N.C.A.A. started two Division I basketball tournaments with 132 teams from across the country descending on the Indianapolis and San Antonio regions, and hockey players scrap cheek-to-jowl on the ice every night.However, with Florida essentially ridding itself of most pandemic-related restrictions, the roles of have flipped. Players arrived in Florida during the past few days along with spring break revelers who are filling Florida’s beaches, bars and nightclubs. The players, who are used to indulging in Miami’s culture, restaurants and nightlife when they are not playing tennis, are living under strict guidelines that the men’s and women’s tennis tours created to keep them as safe as possible.During the tournament, they must live in one of two hotels for players and officials. Had she played, Williams could not have commuted from her home, roughly 75 minutes away. The players’ movement is limited to the tournament and the hotel. No ventures to Joe’s Stone Crab, South Beach or Coconut Grove until they’ve lost.“It does make it harder when you are part of the bubble,” Lauren Davis, the veteran U.S. player, said. “The experience is more draining. There is no outlet for the stress.”Miami Open organizers did not construct the temporary 14,000-seat court inside the Miami Dolphins’ stadium this year. The most important matches will take place on three smaller courts.Prize money has been slashed to $6.7 million from $16.7 million in 2019, though it is among the largest prize purses outside of the Grand Slams and the tour finals. Nearly everyone at the tournament site will have to wear a mask at all times, except for players while they are on the court.Crowds enter and exit South Beach in Miami during the spring break season.Calla Kessler for The New York TimesTennis will likely look this way for some time. The All England Club, the host of Wimbledon, announced last week that players will have to stay in specified hotels for the tournament, set to begin in late June, despite Britain’s success with its vaccine program. Crowd sizes will be reduced and spectators will not be able to line up during the day to search for a ticket.Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece, ranked No. 5 on the men’s tour, said during last week’s tournament in Acapulco, Mexico, that the tour sorely missed Indian Wells this year because it gathers so many top players in front of rabid and casual tennis fans in the United States during the first half of the year. The opportunity to play in front of a crowd of any size — Acapulco allowed roughly 3,000 spectators for each session — had vastly enhanced the experience.“I feel really connected,” he said of the experience of playing in front of fans. “I feel like I can enjoy the game.”But the challenges of the pandemic have forced Tsitsipas and other players to focus almost entirely on larger tournaments for the time being, and the biggest stars to focus almost exclusively on the Grand Slams. Events like Miami may offer plenty of money and rankings points, but everything is just a little different this year. More

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      Naomi Osaka Beats Jennifer Brady to Win Australian Open

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Australian OpenOsaka Wins TitleMen’s Final PreviewDjokovic’s RideWilliams’s Future?AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyNaomi Osaka Beats Jennifer Brady at Australian Open for Her 4th Grand Slam TitleOsaka, 23, has won every Grand Slam final she has reached.Naomi Osaka has a streak of 21 match victories.Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesFeb. 20, 2021Updated 10:08 a.m. ETMELBOURNE, 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 up on the rest of her competition in an increasingly deep women’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 way to 20.“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-year-old in her first major final.She added, “You can only just keeping going down your own path.”Osaka, who won her second United States 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 United States teenager Coco Gauff, a defeat that weighed on Osaka’s mind before she took the court against Brady who was the decided underdog like 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.Brady took a 40-15 lead on her serve in the next game, only to be reeled in by Osaka, who broke her when Brady netted a short forehand — an error, she bemoaned, “that happens maybe one in ten times or hopefully less.”For Osaka, the uncharacteristic miss telegraphed Brady’s unease.“My mind just began thinking that she was either really nervous or really pressured and I should capitalize on that by trying to win as many games as I could, pace-wise,” Osaka said. “Because I feel like once a person loses the first set doubts start to creep in, so that’s when you really should put your foot on the gas.”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.”Osaka, who also won the 2019 Australian Open, called it a privilege to be able to play a major tournament given the coronavirus pandemic. “I didn’t play my last Grand Slam with fans, so just to have this energy it really means a lot,” she said, referring to her three-set victory over Victoria Azarenka in New York.Brady, a 25-year-old American, lost to Osaka in a hard-fought semifinal at the U.S. Open. A member of U.C.L.A.’s 2014 national championship team, Brady became the first woman with collegiate experience in this tournament’s final since 1983. She was trying to become the first to win the title since Barbara Jordan of Stanford did so in 1979.Brady, who was outside the top 50 at the start of 2020, entered the tournament ranked 24th in the world, and after her run at Melbourne Park, she will vault to No. 13.Osaka is the first woman since Monica Seles in 1990 and 1991 to win all four of her first Grand Slam finals.Credit…Loren Elliott/ReutersThe third-ranked Osaka will move to No. 2, behind the Australian Ashleigh Barty, who fell in the quarterfinals. Osaka, who spent long stretches of 2019 at No. 1, said she is not fixated on regaining the top spot.“I feel like I’m at a really good place right now,” Osaka said. “I just want to play every match as hard as I can. If it comes to the point were I’m able to be No. 1 again, I’ll embrace it, but I’m not really chasing it.”Osaka’s path to the final in Melbourne included a close call with defeat in the fourth round, where she faced Garbiñe Muguruza and staved off two match points in a 6-4, 4-6, 7-5 victory. She dropped just 18 games in her final three matches.Among active players, only two women have more Grand Slam titles than Osaka: Williams and her sister Venus, with seven. Osaka’s championships have all come on hardcourts, starting with her victory at the 2018 U.S. Open, where she beat Serena Williams in straight sets in the final. Osaka said the one of her goals this season is to expand her success to other surfaces, starting with clay since the French Open is the next scheduled Grand Slam.“I don’t expect to win all my matches this year,” Osaka said, adding, “I don’t think it’s possible. Tennis players, we go through ups and downs. But for me, I only hope that my ups and downs are less drastic this year.”Osaka’s long-term objective, she said, is to last long enough in tennis to someday face an opponent whom she inspired to take up the sport.“For me, that’s the coolest thing that could ever happen to me,” she said.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Australian Open 2021: In Defeat, Jennifer Brady Proves She Belongs

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Australian OpenOsaka Wins TitleMen’s Final PreviewDjokovic’s RideWilliams’s Future?AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAustralian Open 2021: In Defeat, Jennifer Brady Proves She BelongsAppearing in her first Grand Slam final, the 25-year-old American started slow against Naomi Osaka, but rallied to go down fighting.Jennifer Brady went toe to toe with Naomi Osaka in the first set before falling behind in the Australian Open final.Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesFeb. 20, 2021Updated 7:16 a.m. ETMELBOURNE, Australia — She was playing with house money, a No. 22 seed who spent 15 days confined to a hotel room last month, a former U.C.L.A. Bruin who went to college because she did not have the head for professional tennis at 18 years old and was in need of a backup plan.The old Jennifer Brady was not the one who took the court Saturday night. This Brady approached this match as though she deserved to be here, like she belonged and did not need a participation medal for making it to her first Grand Slam final. Brady took the court believing she could go toe-to-toe with Naomi Osaka, the three-time (make that four-time) Grand Slam champion and the best player in the world right now.Brady had done just that in the semifinals at the United States Open in September, pushing Osaka to three sets and forcing her to come up with everything she had. This was the second Grand Slam in six months where Brady was playing in the final three matches.Brady, 25, predicted she would be nervous at the start of the match, and she was, because she was trying to make something big happen and not just play a supporting role in Osaka’s coronation. She fiddled with her skirt as it blew in the evening breeze. She struggled to find a rhythm while serving. She would land just 48 percent of her first serves.But down 3-1 in the first set, she broke Osaka then knotted the score at 3-3. At four games each, she had Osaka on the ropes on her serve. In one point, she made a lunging service return, then chased down a drop shot from Osaka to loft the perfect lob. She pumped her arm to the crowd, egging them on to raise the volume. They obliged.When Osaka prevailed in that game and Brady netted a forehand from close range to give Osaka the first set, she whacked a ball toward the back wall.“Unfortunate,” she said of that easy ball that somehow ended up in the middle of the net. “Not the way I wanted it to go.”She had been right there, and then she wasn’t. Then, in a flash, she was in a 4-0 hole in the second set.This is what Osaka does. The players who lose to her usually lose for the same reason.Osaka plays so many good shots in the toughest moments that her opponents feel a constant need to hit perfect shot after perfect shot, an impossible task against a player who gives away so little. Serena Williams, the winner of 23 Grand Slam singles titles, fell this way in straight sets Thursday, pounding so many forehands into the net. At this point there probably is not one thing Brady does on a tennis court better than Osaka. She is not alone.Down a set and two games away from losing the match, Brady easily could have packed it in. Staring across the net at Osaka, a player who had awed Brady in their youth when they played junior tournaments together in Florida, the underdog could have been forgiven for going away.If there is one thing the tennis world knows now that it did not know six months ago, it is that Brady does not go away. That might have appeared more likely when she went to U.C.L.A., or when she slumped following an early run to the fourth round here and at the U.S. Open in 2017.But she hooked on with a new coach, Michael Geserer, in early 2019, someone she had never met before, and went to work.“Every time she goes on the court, she leaves everything on the court,” Geserer said.So that is what she did near the end. She broke Osaka to get to 4-1, looked at Geserer with a pumped first and made sure he got the message: Still here. After the changeover, she high-stepped to the baseline, ready to fight, and she did, before ultimately falling 6-4, 6-3.On the WTA Tour, Brady is known as one of the hardest workers. That she outlasted all but one other player after spending 15 days in a hotel room only happened because she was working off a base of fitness she had been building since early November, when she began her preparations for this tournament, far earlier than most players.“I belong at this level,” Brady said when asked what she had learned from this experience. “Winning a Grand Slam is totally achievable for me. It is within reach.” There is work to do to improve her skills, she said, so that when she gets to these big moments she does not feel pressure to play perfectly but just well enough to win.Osaka said that after their battle at the U.S. Open, she told her team that Brady was “going to be a problem.”That is one way of looking at it. The other is that Brady has established herself as an extremely tough out in big tournaments, especially on hardcourts, even if she was not nearly as tough as she wanted to be Saturday night. But make no mistake, she has no intention of going away.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      2021 Australian Open: Naomi Osaka and Jennifer Brady Meet for the Title

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Australian OpenOsaka vs. BradyWomen’s Final PreviewDjokovic’s RideWilliams’s Future?AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story2021 Australian Open: Naomi Osaka and Jennifer Brady Meet for the TitleOsaka, a three-time major winner, and Brady, a first-time Grand Slam finalist, played a memorable semifinal at the 2020 U.S. Open and have history dating back to youth tournaments.Naomi Osaka during her semifinal win over Serena Williams.Credit…Quinn Rooney/Getty ImagesFeb. 19, 2021, 7:00 a.m. ETHow to watch: The match is at 3:30 a.m. Eastern time on Saturday on ESPN, ESPN Deportes and ESPN+. There will be an encore showing at 8 a.m. on ESPN2.The Australian Open women’s singles final matches Naomi Osaka, the 2019 champion, against Jennifer Brady, a first-time Grand Slam finalist. Here are some story lines to follow:Osaka may hit a milestone no woman has reached since 2012.As the world’s highest-paid female athlete and a three-time Grand Slam champion, Naomi Osaka, 23, has already established herself as a global sports superstar.If Osaka adds one more title, she will reach rarer air.The last woman to win a fourth Grand Slam title was Maria Sharapova, at the 2012 French Open. The Williams sisters and the Big 3 men (Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic) all reached four long before that. Andy Murray, Stan Wawrinka and Angelique Kerber each have three.Even with a fourth title, Osaka would still have room to prove herself beyond hardcourts. She has yet to reach the fourth round on the clay of the French Open or the grass of Wimbledon.Brady is part of a strong group of American women.Jennifer Brady during her semifinal victory.Credit…Hamish Blair/Associated PressCompared with American men’s tennis, which has no player in the world’s top 20 and hasn’t produced a Grand Slam winner since 2003, there is a bumper crop of talent in the American women’s ranks. Jennifer Brady, 25, is vying to be the third American woman to win a Grand Slam title since Serena Williams won her most recent one at the 2017 Australian Open. She would join Sloane Stephens, who won the 2017 United States Open, and Sofia Kenin, who won last year’s Australian Open.Considering that four other American women have reached Grand Slam semifinals in that stretch — Madison Keys, Danielle Collins, Amanda Anisimova and CoCo Vandeweghe — it’s clear that Brady has been helped by not needing to carry the entire weight of a nation’s expectations.It’s not how you start.Tennis players arriving in Australia prepared under varying conditions during mandatory 14-day quarantines.Brady was one of the players who had to complete so-called hard quarantines — meaning she was not allowed to leave her hotel room for 14 days — because a person on her charter flight to Australia tested positive for the coronavirus. She lost the practice privileges many of her peers enjoyed.With a positive attitude and diligent help from her coaching team, however, Brady persevered: She was the only woman who experienced the hard quarantine and advanced to the fourth round of the tournament.Osaka, in contrast, was one of the handful of top players who were sent to a different city entirely, Adelaide, where they enjoyed more access to courts and larger accommodations that included outdoor balconies.These big hitters met in the Big Apple.Osaka at practice on Friday.Credit…Darrian Traynor/Getty ImagesThe last match between Osaka and Brady — a 2020 U.S. Open semifinal — may have been one of the best in recent tennis history, with Osaka prevailing, 7-6 (1), 3-6, 6-3, in a barrage of big hitting.Even after having won three Grand Slam finals, each dramatic in its own way, Osaka singled out that match as one that stuck with her.“It’s easily one of my most memorable matches,” Osaka said on Thursday. “I think it was just super high quality throughout.”Brady was torn over whether the experience she had gained from that loss would help her in the final.“Yes, I think I can take away the positives from that match and learn maybe what I did wrong that I wasn’t able to come away with the result,” Brady said Thursday. “But also no, because I also don’t want to compare matches or compare performances and try to replicate that, because every match is different.”Brady and Osaka go way back.Osaka was born in Japan, and Brady in Pennsylvania, but the two encountered each other early in their tennis careers. They both migrated to the tennis hotbed of Florida as children and played each other in youth tournaments there.Early in their professional careers, in the fall of 2014, Brady and Osaka faced off in the first round of an International Tennis Federation $50,000 tournament in New Braunfels, Texas. Brady won the match, 6-4, 6-4, but remembers being impressed by her opponent.“I think she was just coming up maybe inside the top 200, and I remember playing her,” Brady said Thursday. “I was, like, ‘Wow, she hits the ball huge. She’s going to be good.’”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Farewell, Serena? Not So Fast

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Australian OpenOsaka vs. BradyWomen’s Final PreviewDjokovic’s RideWilliams’s Future?AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySports of the TimesFarewell, Serena? Not So FastWilliams’s wan wave after losing to Naomi Osaka in the Australian Open semifinal stirred retirement speculation. GOATs don’t go out that way.At the Australian Open, Serena Williams was in the best shape she had been in since returning from maternity leave, and she pummeled the No. 2-ranked Simona Halep ahead of her defeat in the semifinals.Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesFeb. 19, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETSerena Williams will be back.Count on it.After her humbling semifinal loss to Naomi Osaka at the Australian Open, the questions came hard and fast. Had Osaka’s slashing forehands shouldered Williams to the edge of retirement?Was this the last time Williams would grace the sea-blue courts of the Australian Open, a tournament she has won seven times?At one level, those questions made sense.What more, after all, does she have to prove?There has never been, nor is there likely to be, another champion like Serena, who rose from Compton, Calif., to transcend her sport and become recognizable by the mention of merely her first name. How many more times can an athlete with Williams’s pride endure the sting of coming oh-so-very-close to winning the 24th Grand Slam singles title that would tie Margaret Court for the record?The loss to Osaka — a much-hyped rematch of the pair’s infamous 2018 United States Open final — had a familiar feel. In her prime, Williams possessed an unrivaled ability to summon genius whenever it was needed most. But since her return to tennis after maternity leave that year, she has not won a major. Twice she has lost in a Grand Slam semifinal, and four times in a final.Given the combination of her sterling past and murky present, there is a tendency among the commentariat to parse her every gesture and utterance for signs that she might soon quit. When she walked off the court after losing to Osaka on Thursday, she paused briefly, put a hand on her chest, smiled and waved at fans as they showered her with an ovation. It wasn’t all that different from the thankful gesture she has made after matches for decades. But in the rubble of another disappointment — and considering she is now 39 and a veteran of nearly a quarter-century on the tennis tour — it was a display many onlookers took to have a deeper meaning.“I think with that little move we saw from Serena just now, that might be the last time we see her here on Rod Laver Arena,” said a television announcer, watching it all unfold.But was that wave a final goodbye?“I don’t know,” Williams said in her post-match news conference. “If I ever say farewell, I wouldn’t tell anyone.” A few moments later, struggling to stay composed, she abruptly left the dais.Serena fans, I don’t think you should worry. She is not about to give up the chase just yet. I wouldn’t read too much into a post-match wave or despondent answers to the news media. She has never been one to hide her emotions. She wears victory with high-wattage smiles and prancing giddiness. She wears defeat with slope-shouldered, bone-weary disdain.Had she suffered through a loss like this and then dispassionately discussed two sets of misery, then I’d wonder about her playing much longer. But that’s not what happened here.If the past is a reliable guide — as it has been since her first professional match, a dismal loss in a low-level event when she was only 14 — she will come up with a way to bounce back. She will rationalize defeat, and tell herself she could have beaten Osaka if only she had avoided easy mistakes. She will summon energy from anyone now questioning her ability to win on the biggest stage.She will focus, too, on how well she played in Melbourne up until that loss. The coronavirus pandemic allowed extra time for Williams to heal, clear her mind and renew her spirit. She came into the tournament in her best shape since returning from maternity leave. In the quarterfinals, she pummeled Simona Halep, who had defeated Williams handily in the 2019 Wimbledon final.Williams played Halep on Tuesday with a vengeful clarity not seen in years. Watching the match unfold, I couldn’t help but think of the Australian Open final in 2009, when she destroyed Dinara Safina, 6-0, 6-3, in just under an hour. Williams was 27 then. She won her 10th Grand Slam singles title.A few days after the tournament, I went to her Los Angeles condominium for an interview. I won’t forget the moment when I remarked that the win over Safina was one of the quickest in Grand Slam finals history — and she cut me off immediately. “Fastest in two years,” she said, a glint in her eyes, before reminding me she had beaten Maria Sharapova in a similar fashion at the Australian Open in 2007.The greatest champions remember everything. They are keenly aware of what they have done and what’s still out there to prove. They grow so used to overcoming opponents that motivation comes mostly from chasing history. That’s why a 43-year-old Tom Brady won’t stop after winning yet another Super Bowl title. It’s why LeBron James won’t stop at age 36 — while he is two N.B.A. championship rings behind Michael Jordan. And why Roger Federer will soon return to tennis after recovering from a knee injury at 39.Williams is made of the same stuff. The long-ago past is her only real opponent. Court’s record, 24 singles Slams won in the 1960s and ’70s, is still out there, waiting to be tied and perhaps surpassed. And Williams, to her credit, keeps putting herself in contention, keeps putting herself on the line, even if it means sucking up searing defeats.The road will only get rockier, what with all those miles on the legs and years on tour. Hungry young opponents now sit in every corner of every Grand Slam draw. They seem more confident all the time and less in awe of the woman most of them grew up idolizing. Osaka, for one, has forged herself into a carbon copy of a young Serena: same power, same moxie.When Osaka found herself struggling toward the end of the second set of the semifinal, she responded with a burst of domination that recalled Williams at her peak: Eight straight points, and it was over.Game, set, match.If you think Williams wants to go out like that, think again.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More