As this fortnight has shown, emotions run high at the US Open. With frayed nerves and tired minds at the end of a long season, players are plunged into the febrile cauldron of New York.
Such was the case in 2019 when Naomi Osaka – defending champion and all-powerful world No1 – defeated 15-year-old Coco Gauff, who had exploded to stardom at Wimbledon two months’ earlier.
Osaka shared her post-match on-court interview with a tearful Gauff, whom she had known as a child when they trained at the same Florida academy. Osaka addressed Corey and Candi Gauff in the crowd: ‘You guys raised an incredible player.’
The intervening six years have proved the abundant truth of that statement and in Monday’s fourth round, these two will meet in a Grand Slam for the first time since they drowned the court with tears.
Gauff shed plenty of tears this year, too, in a draining second-round victory over Donna Vekic. The 21-year-old has since revealed she suffered a panic attack on court.
‘I’ve had them before off court but it was the first time that happened to me on the court,’ the world No. 3 told Sky Sports.
Coco Gauff and Naomi Osaka have not met at a Grand Slam since the US Open in 2019
‘I was trying to calm myself down and just breathe in the moment and that was why I went to the bathroom after that first set to reset.
‘I think I needed that to happen because the support that I got afterwards, I just realized how much people love me. How much I should love myself, too, in those moments. It was a learning experience and I’ll remember it for the rest of my career.’
Gauff is in the midst of remodeling her service action, under the auspices of biomechanist Gavin MacMillan, and the stress of doing so in the heat of competition is proving difficult to handle.
As for Osaka, she has reached the fourth round of a Grand Slam for the first time since giving birth to her son Shai in 2023. And so these two meet again with their positions curiously reversed from 2019: all the pressure is on Gauff, champion here in 2023 and among the favorites to win it again; Osaka, in her ‘second career’, is the one striving to show she can reach those heights again.
After beating Daria Kasatkina in three sets to set up the rematch, Osaka harked back to 2019. ‘My recollections were just knowing she was going to be a really great tennis player. I was right,’ said the 27-year-old. ‘She was, what, 15 at the time? She handled herself really well and I knew she was going to be back there.
‘To be playing her again after six years, I don’t know if that makes me old, but to be at this point of my life and playing her again feels special.’
This sport badly needs Osaka to return to the highest echelon of the game. At her best she was thrilling to watch and her quirky personality cuts through to those outside the tennis bubble.
Raised in America but born in Osaka to a Japanese mother, she represents the country of her birth and that opens up a huge market for tennis.
Now Gauff is a former champion and America’s hopes are resting on her shoulders
Osaka is working her way back to the top of the game but Gauff will provide stiff opposition
The Osaka family settled here in New York before upping sticks to Florida for Naomi’s training, and it will be interesting to see whether that takes any edge off the rousing local support for Gauff.
For Gauff, the premature exits of Ben Shelton, Frances Tiafoe and Tommy Paul have narrowed the gaze of America even more in her direction.
She has become almost like Serena Williams as a pied piper of celebrity. She celebrated courtside with Spike Lee when she won the French Open and Simone Biles watched that nervy win over Vekic.
The two American sporting icons caught up for a chat afterwards and Biles, who famously suffered ‘the twisties’ at the Paris Olympics, advised Gauff on how to deal with the pressure of performance.
‘I was like a sponge trying to absorb whatever she said,’ Gauff said, crediting Biles for her more stable emotional state – and second serve – in the third-round win over Magdalena Frech.
Gauff has had her own version of the twisties and lived to tell the tale. She remains poised on the high bar, ready to fly.
