US Open: Naomi Osaka: “It has always been a dream to experience this moment”

The Japanese Naomi Osaka has fulfilled a dream and will challenge her idol Serena Williams in the US Open final on Saturday.

The man from the sports channel ESPN gave his best. A U.S. open final for the commercial cable station absolutely needs dramatic escalation and strong words of the rivals, and so Tom Rinaldi asked the young Naomi Osaka on the Centre Court on Thursday evening what “message” she had for her final opponent Serena Williams.

Osaka giggled a bit embarrassed, then she mumbled unexpectedly into the microphone: “I love you.” And after a moment’s break, there was another shot of harmony on top from the Sky Forward, now towards the 24,000 fans in the world’s biggest tennis arena: “I love you all.”

Naomi Osaka against Serena Williams: It’s not just a classic, electrifying generational duel in which the queen crown will be negotiated at the 2018 US Open – between the 20-year-old Japanese and the soon-to-be 37-year-old US icon. It is also a duel in which tennis mother Serena has to compete against a player whose career was modeled for life after the Williams family duel.

And who wanted nothing more than to be able to step onto the pitch as a child, junior and now also as a young professional player against the indestructible American in a Grand Slam final. “It has always been a dream to experience this moment. A finale like this one in New York, Serena on the one hand, me on the other,” says Osaka.

Even on the last meters of the long march to this rendezvous, the thoughts of the highly talented were completely focused on Williams. Osaka was asked how she had fended off 13 of 13 break chances in a 6-2, 6-4 win over Madison Keys (USA) in the semi-final – and the answer came promptly as if the question wasn’t really worth asking: “I really wanted to play Serena”.

However, Osaka also put this on record, and this could then be understood as a small warning and declaration of war to the great idol: “I always dreamed of this endgame match. But I never dreamed I would lose.”

Osaka’s father Leonard Francois, an American with Haitian roots, also had a big dream a good decade and a half ago. His two daughters Mari and Naomi should make a career in sport, on the tennis tour – just like the Williams sisters, who had already made the headlines worldwide.

The family therefore decided to move from Japan to the USA, close to the big, renowned tennis academies, but there was also another reason – in Japan people suffered from discrimination, wife Tamaki was even considered a disgrace among her relatives because of her marriage to a dark-skinned foreigner. “Hafu” the children Naomi and Mari were typically called disparaging, half Japanese.

Naomi, the younger of the two sisters, was the only one to succeed in her international career. It has what the Americans call the “Big Game” – powerful blows, enormous power. A force that allows her to score points from every possible and impossible angle of the place. She is compared early on with Serena Williams, she has the potential to be “at the top of the rankings”, says the great Martina Navratilova about the Japanese woman as early as 2016.

But the burden of expectations is often still too heavy for the shy, often naive-looking athlete – the track record is like a zigzag course. The roller coaster ride also leaves its mark on Osaka, it makes no secret of it: “People kept asking me if I could do more and win another round,” she says in New York when she reaches a Grand Slam semi-final for the first time and breaks into tears immediately after the match against Belarussian Sabalenka.

Osaka has already shown her talents this season, actually for the first time in her still young career. That was at the millionaire spectacle in Indian Wells when she took out three former number one players on the way to cup triumph. Shortly afterwards she also won the first and so far only match against her idol Williams, but the comeback of the American was just in the early stages after the baby break.

“Now it’s just as important as in March that I don’t think of Serena as my role model, but as an opponent. I want victory, the trophy,” says Osaka. Only she, the 20-year-old final debutant, can now prevent the Serena fairy tale, the tale of the US Open victory just one year after the complicated, life-threatening birth of daughter Olympia.