By Chris Oddo | Thursday September 6, 2018
Cool under pressure isn’t typically the calling card of 20-year-old tennis players entering their first ever Grand Slam semifinal, but Japan’s Naomi Osaka has never been your typical tennis player.
Displaying big match moxie far beyond her years Osaka bent but didn’t break against hard-hitting American Madison Keys on Thursday in New York, saving all 13 break points she faced to earn a 6-2, 6-4 victory and book a spot alongside Serena Williams in Saturday’s U.S. Open final.
How did she find the courage to stare down all those break points and never yield over the course of her 85-minute encounter with last year’s runner-up?
“This is going to sound really bad,” she told the crowd after match, “but I was just thinking: I really want to play Serena.”
Consider it done.
The pair will square off for the second time, and the first time since Osaka shellacked Williams in Miami this spring, 6-3, 6-2. It was a one-sided affair that was as much about Osaka’s scorching form as it was about Williams’ lack of form. Osaka was coming off winning the Indian Wells title and riding an emotional high. Williams was just barely dipping her toes back into the water of her long-awaited comeback, a mere six months after giving birth to her daughter Olympia.
On Saturday they’ll meet on more level footing, with Osaka reaching a new level of composure and maturity in her tennis, and Serena now a full year past her difficult child birth and just now rounding into her most menacing form.
In Thursday’s first semifinal Williams waltzed past Anastasija Sevastova 6-3, 6-0 behind a barrage of nuanced net play and a slew of winners.
The American threw everything at the Latvian and cracked 31 winners as she claimed 12 of the final 13 games of the match.
Osaka knows she’ll be facing a different Serena than the one she blasted past in Miami, but she doesn’t want to overthink things ahead of her first Grand Slam final.
“I mean, like, for starters, when you just come back and then you make the finals of two slams, I think that's really amazing,” Osaka said of the 36-year-old Williams. “I'm sure that everyone knows that Serena's really good, of course.”
She then quickly added: “But I don't know. I really feel like I don't want to overthink this match, so I'm not going to think that she's so much better than she was in Miami. I'm just going to go out there and play. Since I already know she's a good player, I don't want to be surprised if she plays better or not.”
Whatever approach Osaka is taking to her tennis in New York, it is clearly working. She entered tonight’s matchup with Keys toting an 0-3 lifetime record against the American and was being constantly asked about their first match—and the only one they contested at the U.S. Open—where Keys rallied from 5-1 down to defeat her in a third-set tiebreaker in 2016.
Faced with plenty of adversity, and thus given plenty of opportunity to let the memories of that debacle creep in on Thursday night, Osaka played with the poise of a proven champion, saving break points by the bushel as Keys threw all that she could at Osaka in hopes of breaking through.
At one point, when Osaka slid a perfectly placed second-serve ace down the T in the second game of the second set, Keys could only laugh moments after the ball had spun laterally out of her reach.
It was that kind of night for the American. She finished with 23 winners and 32 unforced errors, and while she gifted Osaka a few too many points, particularly in the first set, it seemed like the better she played in her return games, the sterner Osaka’s rebuke would be.
Keys remained within a break throughout the second set, and it felt like the damn might burst if only Osaka would slip up on one of Keys’ numerous break opportunities—but she never did.
“I felt like if I could break, maybe I could get back into it,” Keys said. “Every time I had a break point, it was an ace or a winner or something like that. I mean, it's obviously tough because you keep fighting, trying to get the breakpoint, then for her to come up with some of the shots, it was difficult. But you're in that match and you think, Okay, she's going to let up eventually. She didn't, so... All credit to her.”
It remains to be seen of Osaka can produce the same magic against Williams in the final. The American will be bidding for her 24th major title, which would tie her with Margaret Court on the all-time Grand Slam title list. She fell at the last hurdle at Wimbledon to Angelique Kerber, and though Williams owns a lifetime record of 23-7 in major finals, she has lost three of her last five.
At the U.S. Open where Williams is bidding for her record seventh title, she holds a record of 6-2 in finals and has won her last three.
Osaka would prefer not to think about any of Williams’ legacy if at all possible. She has talked openly of her idolization of Williams, but now that the final is near, she is of a singular purpose.
“Even when I was a little kid, I always dreamed that I would play Serena in a final of a Grand Slam,” Osaka said. “Just the fact that it's happening, I'm very happy about it. At the same time I feel like even though I should enjoy this moment, I should still think of it as another match. Yeah, I shouldn't really think of her as, like, my idol. I should just try to play her as an opponent.”