[Sport]Osaka punishes Brady's inexperience and wins his fourth Grand Slam title

[SougarLord]

 

Australia pays tribute to Naomi Osaka, now a two-time tournament champion with four Grand Slam titles. The Japanese beat Jennifer Brady 6-4 and 6-3, in an hour and 18 minutes of a final that had no other story than that of the first set.

 

From there, finding that Brady was overweight with his first major final, Osaka, who will be number two in the world on Monday, walked comfortably towards the cup. She is the most compelling player on the circuit. Palpable proof is that she has already positioned herself as the third active tennis player with more great pampering than veteran Kim Clijsters. She is three away from Venus Williams and, yes, an eternity away from the 23 of her sister Serena, whom she stopped again in the semifinals as she had in the final of the US Open in 2018. If she cannot reach Margaret's 24 Court, Serena will always have in her memory the painful scourge of Osaka.

 

Jennifer Brady was no longer a quasi-anonymous player, like her when she reached the semifinals of the last US Open, where she fell precisely against Osaka. Twenty-fourth seeded, the American has ratified in Melbourne the remarkable letter of introduction of her in New York. There is room for new racquets in a still troubled elite, as Iga Swiatek demonstrated last fall at Roland Garros. In that power vacuum, with nine different champions in the last 14 Grand Slam tournaments until the last edition of the Parisian tournament, Osaka represents stability. At 23, she has played four grand finals and has won them all.

 

The Japanese appeared in the final with a streak of 20 consecutive victories, without losing a match in almost a year. In fact, the last tennis player capable of beating her was the Spanish Sara Sorribes, in the Federation Cup, in February 2020. Winner of the US Open in 2018 and 2020 and in this Australian Open also in 2019, Osaka is among the few certainties in the women's tennis, tending to gobble up fleeting champions.

 

COARSE ERRORS

 

The third seeded already warned of a single game with a break in the fourth game. It was she who dominated and intimidated Brady, 24th, with the rest of her sharpening her. But the American, who had delivered her serve by conceding two double faults, recovered it immediately to equalize three. There were, however, too many nerves in Brady's tennis, who did not convert a ball to reach 5-4 and serve, to see the set fly in the next game victim of errors as gross as the forehand with which he concluded this first partial.

 

Osaka, who escaped two match points against Garbiñe Muguruza in the round of 16, didn't need his best to get ahead; she just had to wait for Brady's hesitations. She left early in the second set, the score of which was only able to clean up the industrious Brady. In need of solid references, women's tennis has a long-standing star in Naomi Osaka.