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Naomi Osaka Beats Jennifer Brady to Win Australian Open
#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
#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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Australian Open 2021: Novak Djokovic and Daniil Medvedev Meet for the Title
#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: Novak Djokovic and Daniil Medvedev Meet for the TitleDjokovic, aiming for his ninth title in the tournament, should face a strong challenge from Medvedev.Novak Djokovic in his semifinal victory over Aslan Karatsev.Credit…Dave Hunt/EPA, via ShutterstockFeb. 20, 2021, 7:08 a.m. ETHow to watch: The match is at 3:30 a.m. Eastern time on Sunday on ESPN, ESPN Deportes and ESPN+. There will be encore showings at 8 a.m. and 11 p.m. on ESPN2.The men’s singles final that will wrap up this year’s Australian Open is a battle between the standard-bearer Novak Djokovic and the worthiest challenger the field could have mustered, the surging Daniil Medvedev. Here’s what to watch for as the two face off:Medvedev is on a roll.Medvedev, 25, has put together a remarkable run in the past few months, reeling off a 20-match win streak that includes titles at the Paris Masters, the ATP Finals in London, and the ATP Cup in Melbourne. Twelve of those 20 wins came against top-10 opponents. He has beaten eight of the nine other players in the top 10; only Roger Federer, who has been out of competition for more than a year with knee problems, avoided a loss to Medvedev. Daniil Medvedev in his semifinal victory over Stefanos Tsitsipas.Credit…Patrick Hamilton/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“For the confidence, when you beat everybody it’s just great, because I think people start maybe to be a little bit scared about you,” Medvedev said Friday after thrashing Stefanos Tsitsipas in the semifinals in Melbourne. “At the same time, sometimes there are going to be some that are going to want to beat you even more. It’s a tricky situation, but I’m happy I managed to be on top in all those 20 matches.”Djokovic is in his happy place.Though his name is not quite synonymous with this tournament in the way that Rafael Nadal’s has become with the French Open, Djokovic, 33, is the player of the century (so far) at the Australian Open. It was where he won his first Grand Slam title, in 2008, when he was only 20.Like Nadal in Paris, Djokovic is undefeated in finals in Melbourne, with an 8-0 record. If he wins on Sunday, Djokovic would sit alone in second place, behind Nadal and his 13 French Open titles, on the list of men’s singles championships won at a particular Grand Slam event. Djokovic is currently tied with Federer, who has eight Wimbledon singles championships.Djokovic’s dominance in Melbourne is not just about the surface: He has won only three titles at the United States Open, which is played on fairly similar hardcourts. Serbian fans supporting Djokovic in the semifinals.Credit…Daniel Pockett/Getty ImagesIn Melbourne, though, Djokovic gets strong support from a substantial local contingent of Serbian expatriates, whereas the crowds at the U.S. Open in New York often root against him.Medvedev has shown he can handle Djokovic.These days, Medvedev isn’t likely to be intimidated by anyone in tennis, and he has particular reasons to feel comfortable against Djokovic.Medvedev has won three of his seven previous meetings against Djokovic, including a semifinal at the Cincinnati Masters in 2019 on a fast hardcourt that played similarly to the courts in Melbourne this year.In the fourth round of the 2019 Australian Open, he lost to Djokovic, who received extra treatment because of all the exertion and contortion required to beat Medvedev.“It was hard to go through him,” Djokovic said that night. “It was kind of a cat-and-mouse game for most of the match — that’s why it was so lengthy. We had rallies of 40, 45 exchanges. That’s why I think it was physically exhausting, because of the fact that we didn’t really allow each other to think that we can make a lot of unforced errors and give away points.”In the third round this year at the Open, Djokovic sustained an abdominal injury in his match against Taylor Fritz. Djokovic initially spoke pessimistically about his chances of continuing in the tournament, but he has seemed less affected by the injury in each subsequent match, even as his right side remains heavily taped under his shirt.The rankings could be shaken up.To find the last final in which a male player claimed his first Grand Slam title against an older finalist who had already won one, you need to go back all the way to the 2009 United States Open, where Juan Martín del Potro beat Roger Federer. When Dominic Thiem won his first Grand Slam title at last year’s U.S. Open, he did it almost literally by default, after Djokovic had been disqualified from the tournament in the round of 16 when he swatted a stray ball in frustration and hit a lineswoman in the throat.A Medvedev victory, however, could represent a genuine shift. If he defeats Djokovic, he will rise to the No. 2 spot in the world rankings. It would be the first time since Lleyton Hewitt reached No. 2 in July 2005 that anyone but Djokovic, Nadal, Federer or Andy Murray was ranked in the top two.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
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Women’s Doubles Champion Aryna Sabalenka Says She’s Going Solo
#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 storyA Women’s Doubles Champion Says She’s Going SoloAfter Aryna Sabalenka and her partner, Elise Mertens, won the Australian Open, Sabalenka said she was breaking up their team so she could focus on her singles career.Aryna Sabalenka will move into the No. 1 ranking in women’s doubles just as she stops playing it.Credit…Kelly Defina/ReutersFeb. 19, 2021, 9:40 a.m. ETAryna Sabalenka and her partner, Elise Mertens, won the Australian Open women’s doubles final, 6-2, 6-3, over Barbora Krejcikova and Katerina Siniakova on Friday afternoon at Rod Laver Arena.The win will move Sabalenka to the No. 1 ranking in doubles for the first time, with Mertens close behind at No. 2.But after the title, the second Grand Slam triumph they have won together, Sabalenka said she would no longer play doubles and instead put her “whole focus on singles,” in which she is ranked seventh.“I just want to manage my energy,” Sabalenka said. “When you go out for doubles, you’re still there for competing, to put everything you have. Sometimes it’s not really working well with me.”Sabalenka is the only WTA or ATP player currently ranked in the Top 10 in both singles and doubles. She has been one of the most consistent players at WTA Tour events, where she has won nine singles titles. She reeled off 13 straight wins on tour across the end of last season and the beginning of this one.But at Grand Slam events Sabalenka has fallen far short of her expectations. She has only reached even the fourth round in singles twice in 13 main draw appearances, including at this Australian Open, where she lost, 6-4, 2-6, 6-4, to Serena Williams.“It was a great match against Serena — I’m not really happy with the end of the first and third set. I think I could do it better — but I think it was great experience,” Sabalenka said Friday. “It was a great lesson.“I think I’m getting better on the Grand Slams side of the results,” she added. “I just want to keep it up. I just want to try to do something else to make sure I improve my singles.”Mertens, who is ranked 16th in singles, voiced no objection to Sabalenka’s breaking up their dominant team.“It’s her decision, I really respect that,” Mertens said. “Doubles takes some energy away, that’s true. On the other hand, for me, I just like to play matches.“I mean, she can definitely try and we’ll see,” Mertens added. “If she still likes to play doubles, I’m here.”Sabalenka said that not prioritizing doubles had been one of the keys to her success in the discipline.“From my side, I would say I was pretty relaxed on doubles,” Sabalenka said. “I was doing whatever I want to. I didn’t care about winning or losing.”“She didn’t care about me,” Mertens interjected with a laugh.Sabalenka said that though she was more relaxed, being in a second competitive environment was still taxing.“I know that doubles, it’s not that hard, you’re not moving that much,” she said. “It still takes a lot of energy. I just want to save it for singles. I just want to try something different this year and see what happens on the Grand Slams.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
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2021 Australian Open: Naomi Osaka and Jennifer Brady Meet for the Title
#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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For Djokovic in Australia, a Complicated Road Has a Familiar Destination
#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 storyFor Djokovic in Australia, a Complicated Road Has a Familiar DestinationThe reigning champion and world No. 1 will play in his ninth Australian Open final. He has yet to lose one.Novak Djokovic earned a spot in the Australian Open final by beating Aslan Karatsev, a qualifier, in a semifinal.Credit…Cameron Spencer/Getty ImagesFeb. 19, 2021Updated 6:04 a.m. ETMELBOURNE, Australia — Everything changed for Novak Djokovic in a split-second explosion during the third set of his Australian Open quarterfinal this week.With the match tied at a set apiece, Alexander Zverev of Germany, one of the top young players in the world, was serving with a 3-2 lead. Djokovic could not convert his chances to tie the set, failing on a key point to get one of Zverev’s signature 135-mile-an-hour serves back over the net.There was no shame in that. But Djokovic thought otherwise and took the frustration out on his racket. He slammed his Head Pro Stock to the ground with three violent whacks, smashing the frame and spraying shards across the back of the court. The sound of the destruction, like a bone snapping, echoed through the empty stadium.[embedded content]It was the sort of outburst that usually signals the beginning of the end for most players. For Djokovic though — this time, at least — there was a rebirth, as he seemed to release all the tension that had been building for weeks.First, quarantine restrictions wreaked havoc on preparations for the Open, the year’s first Grand Slam event. Then an injured abdominal muscle nearly forced Djokovic out of the tournament. And at that moment on Tuesday, one of the game’s most dangerous players had him in a high-octane fight.Yet Djokovic, the top-ranked player in the world, grabbed a replacement racket, won four straight games to take that third set, then pushed through a tooth-and-nail fourth to advance.“I wouldn’t recommend this kind of relief channeling,” Djokovic said a few hours after the match.He said he wasn’t proud of his behavior. But tennis forces a journey through many different emotions, and Djokovic has demons to fight, he explained, the tension building with every lost point and game. Eventually the pressure has to find a release.“I just kind of let it go,” he said. “Poor racket.”Every tennis player who assumes the top ranking in tennis endures special pressures. The ones who survive over the long term generally work hard to minimize their stress by avoiding anything that might distract them from the pursuit of continued success.Perhaps more than any of his predecessors, though, Djokovic, 33, goes toward the heat. He knows the hazards that may bring. But he is willing to manage the consequences of his behavior, which could involve trying to stage a tennis event in the first months of the pandemic; on-court outbursts, including one that led to his disqualification at the U.S. Open; or pressuring the Australian Open tournament organizers on behalf of 72 players who ended up confined to their hotel rooms for 14 days after arrival in Melbourne because on their flights they had been exposed to people with the coronavirus. His recommendation for an early end to their lockdown and access to tennis courts at private homes, among other impossible-to-meet demands, garnered widespread ridicule.“I think Novak feels an obligation as the top-ranked player in the world to be a voice for the players,” said Craig Tiley, who is the chief executive of Tennis Australia, which runs the Open, and who fielded those demands, rejected nearly all of them, then did his best to carry out Djokovic damage control.In spite of it all, this tournament has given Djokovic what he so often finds when he plays in Melbourne — the chance to right his ship and jump start his tennis year.In the final on Sunday, he will play Daniil Medvedev of Russia, who has not lost a singles match since October. “He’s the man to beat,” Djokovic said of Medvedev. A victory then would give Djokovic a third consecutive Australian Open singles championship and a record ninth over all. He has never lost in a final here.The script this year has hardly followed its traditional form.Djokovic angered local residents with his pretournament demands, and the rowdy support he often receives from fans here nearly disappeared, except from pockets of native Serbians who faithfully show up each year to watch their compatriot. He injured an abdominal muscle during his third-round match and appeared on the edge of elimination before he prevailed in five sets.Djokovic has used the injury and those of other players to ignite another controversy, citing them in his criticism of the people who run professional tennis and insisting that special arrangements are going to have to be made for the tours to continue amid all the travel restrictions and fears related to the spread of the virus. He raised the possibility of a series of bubbles, like the one the N.B.A. created last year in Florida, arguing that travel-related quarantines would compromise players’ safety because they would have to compete after getting limited training time.“There’s too many injuries,” Djokovic said. “A majority of the players just don’t want to go ahead with the season if we are going to have to quarantine before most of the tournaments.”That may or may not be true, and plenty of players cannot afford to forgo a season. Djokovic, who has collected nearly $150 million in prize money plus many lucrative endorsements, has no such worries.Rafael Nadal, Djokovic’s (usually) friendly rival, has taken a different tack, arguing that the first priority is for everyday people to be safe and that there are bigger problems in the world right now than where and how he can compete.“We need to be grateful to life that we can keep doing what we are doing,” Nadal said after his heartbreaking, five-set loss in the quarterfinals to Tsitsipas.Djokovic has never lost an Australian Open final.Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesAmid it all, on the court Djokovic is rounding into form at the perfect time, pressuring his opponents on their serve as no one else can.“It’s one of the most difficult things in our sport, holding your serve against Novak,” Zverev said.In the semifinals, Djokovic mostly had his way with little-known Aslan Karatsev of Russia. No surprise there: Karatsev, who had to go through qualifying rounds, is the world’s 114th-ranked player. But he pushed Djokovic to within a point of coughing up a 5-2 lead in the second set and had the crowd pulling for him throughout.On his magical run to the final four, Karatsev knocked off the eighth-seeded Diego Schwartzman; Felix Auger-Aliassime of Canada, a rising star and the No. 20 seed; and Grigor Dimitrov, the No. 18 seed, who had back spasms after winning the first set. Djokovic, Karatsev said, was on another level entirely.“A huge difference,” Karatsev said. “He does not give you any points, even on my serve, long rallies.”Whatever frustration Djokovic felt during the match, and it appeared he had little, he expressed it during his usual one-way discussion in Serbian with his support team.When it was over, he pointed to the sky and to all four sides of the arena, performing his ritual gesture of giving his heart to everyone in the crowd.Another win would give him an 18th Grand Slam singles title, pulling him within two of Roger Federer and Nadal, who share the men’s record. It would also be sweet vindication after this long, turbulent journey.“It took a lot out of me,” Djokovic said of this Australian Open. “I was exhausted, especially after Zverev’s match, but I was thrilled to overcome those huge challenges. I knew that once I triumphed over Zverev that things will be better, will get better for me. I just had that kind of inner feeling and proved to be right.”In Australia, he often is.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
