Naomi Osaka, remarkably, will reach for her first slam title here on Saturday with a calmer racket than Serena Williams, who has played at this level most of her career and will move alongside Margaret Court with 24 majors if she can beat her 20-year-old opponent.
Williams, who turns 37 this month, promised fans “this is just the beginning” after demolishing Anastasija Sevastova to qualify for her ninth home final, having won the first of six US Open titles in 1999 by beating the then world No 1 Martina Hingis.
It was an ominous statement of intent by the American, who is seven months into her comeback after enduring life-threatening complications when giving birth to her first child a year ago. Yet, for all her majesty, there is an underlying vulnerability in her makeup that has occasionally drained her powerful game of menace when she needed it, most dramatically here three years ago when she lost in the semi-final to the unseeded Italian Roberta Vinci, two wins short of a calendar slam. Williams was shattered.
Osaka, meanwhile, brings a rare and refreshing mix of innocence and daring to what will be an occasion fairly wreathed in historical significance. Born in Japan, raised in the US and residing in a million hearts after her uplifting win in her semi-final against Madison Keys, Osaka is the first Japanese woman to reach a slam final.
Yet, even given she is facing the woman who inspired her to play the game, an opponent regarded by many as the finest in the history of the sport, Osaka somehow is building her own armour of invincibility. Of course she is beatable, but Keys, the 2017 finalist, was persuaded otherwise.
The ever gracious Keys, who could not convert any of her 13 break opportunities on Thursday night, summed it up perfectly afterwards: “For a first-time semi-finalist on a big stage and all that, it was really impressive. She held her nerve the entire time, never really had any kind of slip-up.”
Six of those service saves arrived in an eight-deuce hold after Osaka had broken at the start of the second set. That showed championship cool. From there to the line, she husbanded her lead like someone who had been doing it all her life.
Osaka turned in another impressive performance in her press conference, just after midnight, an event that has become unmissable theatre.
“It feels a little bit, like, surreal,” she smiled. “Even when I was a little kid, I always dreamed that I would play Serena in a final of a grand slam. 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. I shouldn’t really think of her as, like, my idol. I should just try to play her as an opponent.”
It takes uncommon maturity to even think that, let alone say it in public. Many players in her situation would baulk at thinking of a grand final against Williams as just “another match”.
Keys’s view of the final was interesting. “I think if she plays like she did tonight, she can give Serena a run for her money. It will be a really good match. I’m for sure going to watch it.”
Beaten semi-finalists often pack their bags and leave town but Keys is as intrigued as the rest of us about this final. As, of course, is Williams, the third oldest slam finalist of the Open era, behind Martina Navratilova and her sister, Venus. She is a realist, though, and knows how much she has stressed her body in returning to something like the player she was before her long sabbatical after winning the 2017 Australian Open.
“This is just the beginning of my return,” she said. “I’m still on the way up. There’s still much more that I plan on doing. You don’t reach your best a couple of months in. That’s kind of where I am now. I feel like there’s a lot of growth to still go in my game. That’s actually the most exciting part.”
When asked this year if she or Roger Federer would retire first, she replied: “Oh, I’m just playing until Roger stops.”
However, Federer, who turned 37 last month, was beginning to look his age for the first time when he lost to the Australian world No 55 John Millman in the fourth round. It was the biggest of several shocks at this 50th edition of the US Open.
It will not do to look away from the action in the Arthur Ashe Stadium on Saturday night.
