Page 18 - Tennis Magazine April 2019

Naomi Osaka

has beaten her

idol, Serena

Williams, on

tennis’ biggest

stage—and

The 2018 US Open women’s final between Naomi Osaka and Serena backed it up
Williams was many things. It was a stunning upset. It was an with another
unmitigated disaster. It was a night of chaos and composure. It was
a war between a star player and a stickler chair umpire. When it was Slam. Can
over, it became a proxy for arguments about sexism, racism and the
rule of law. It was the only thing anyone could talk about for months. she make the
As the winner said afterward: “I don’t really know what happened.” court, and
For movie buffs, the match conjured images from that archetypal
Hollywood tale of generational rivalry, All About Eve. In the 1951 the sport,
film, Bette Davis plays a Broadway star who watches as her most
devoted fan, one 20 years her junior, takes a job as her understudy, hers in a
and then takes over her leading role. way that
Tennis’ version of that Oscar-winning story had all the elements
needed for the silver screen. Williams has?

On one side of
was Williams, the 36-year-old superstar audience greeted the result, which In the process, Osaka
who was going for a record-tying 24th followed three Williams code violations, assumed a title that
Grand Slam singles title. On the other with a torrential downpour of boos. Serena has previously held for 31
side was Osaka, the soft-spoken 20-year- “The memory of the US Open is a little world No. 1.
old who was playing her first Grand Slam bit bittersweet,” Osaka would say later. In the end, what the US Open fi
final, had won one career tournament and “I feel like it was so strange, I just didn’t have signaled was a long-awaited
who, as a third-grader, had written an want to think about it. I wanted to just ing of the WTA guard.
essay about how much she idolized push it to the side.”
Serena. Sitting in Osaka’s player box was What Osaka didn’t know was that she For Osaka, the movie script tha
Sascha Bajin, Serena’s former hitting part- had bigger, and much less bitter, things its finale at Flushing Meadows ha
ner who now served as Osaka’s coach. in her future. Just five months after much earlier. It was one she had
The story ended with the understudy, hearing boos at the US Open, she was starring in her whole life.
rather than the legend, lifting the trophy. roundly cheered in Melbourne for “She’s the main reason why I st
But it also came with an unfortunate winning her second straight major title, at playing,” Osaka has said of Seren

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