In US Open classic, Osaka and Brady push before Naomi pulls away

“Honestly,” Naomi Osaka said—she begins a lot of her interview answers with that word—“I felt like I was just sticking it out.”

That’s what the 22-year-old said made the difference in her 7-6 (1), 3-6, 6-3 semifinal win over Jen Brady on Thursday. As she so often is, Osaka was being humble. This match, and particularly her winning performance in it, was of the highest quality throughout. Osaka forced Brady to play better in the second set, and Brady responded. Then Brady forced Osaka to play better in the third set, and Osaka responded.

Big serves were matched by big serves; Osaka and Brady broke one time each and earned just six break points between them. Winners from one were matched by winners from the other; each woman finished with 35, and each hit significantly more winners than errors. Surges of good play from one side of the net were met by surges from the other, and neither woman went away, or dropped her level for more than a game. Osaka’s machine-gun-style ground strokes—few players generate more power more compactly—were matched by the far-ranging athleticism of Brady, who hit her forehand winners crosscourt, down the line, inside-out, and inside-in. ESPN’s court-side commentators, Rennae Stubbs and Brad Gilbert, had the same reaction from the front row: “These two are clocking the ball.”

Getty Images

Over two hours and eight minutes, just a few passages of play made the difference. The first came in the opening-set tiebreaker. After staying so solid all set, Brady betrayed her inexperience, and perhaps her relative lack of belief, on a Grand Slam stage. She put a makeable forehand pass into the net. She sent an equally makeable second-serve return long. And she dug a 1-5 hole with by hitting a regulation forehand wide, something she hadn’t done at all to that point.

But one of the highlights of this match was seeing Brady regroup, adjust her tactics, and grow in belief as the night progressed. Through the first set, Brady was unable to do much with the fairly ordinary second serves that Osaka was putting into the middle of the box. But in the second set, she found the answer: She stopped going for outright winners, and started going up the middle and straight at Osaka. The strategy finally earned her a break at 4-3 in the second set. For a few games after that, Brady was the better player. She played defense, she played consistently, and it looked as if her momentum might sweep her all the way into the final.

But then it was Osaka’s turn to adapt. Serving at 1-1 in the third, she was ready for Brady’s bigger returns, and she fired them back for two lethal winners of her own. Osaka continued with two more winners on Brady’s serve in the next game, and broke when Brady failed to challenge a backhand that was called long, but was later shown to have caught a sliver of the baseline.

“I tried to adjust on her serve in the third set,” Osaka said, “and maybe that made the difference.”

Brady hung in through the third and forced Osaka to close it out. Osaka was up to the task—but not without a wobble. Serving for the match at 5-3, Osaka lost control of her toss and double faulted. But as she had all night, she came right back with a big serve—116 m.p.h. in this case—to stop the slide. She followed that with a forehand winner to reach match point, and one last unreturnable serve up the T to win it. Osaka’s wobble, and her ability to right herself all in one game, had a champion’s quality to it

Brady walked off waving to the invisible crowd in Ashe Stadium. Osaka, who is into her second US Open final in three years, said with a smile, “I love the atmosphere, even though there’s no one here.’

The two women put on a show worthy of a 23,000-fan crowd, and worthy of a long ovation when it was over. Hopefully we’ll seem them get one in New York in the future, and hopefully we’ll see them match shots and wits again many more times. For tonight, tennis fans could only applaud from home.

This match was billed as the undercard, understandably, to the Serena Williams-Victoria Azarenka semifinal that followed. Honestly, though, as Osaka would say, it was a hard act to follow.