Naomi Osaka thwarts Coco Gauff in "a really good match" to begin Cincinnati campaign

MATCH POINT: Osaka defeats Gauff in Cincy

“It will be interesting to see how Naomi Osaka starts this match,” a British TV commentator Claire Curran said as the WTA’s No. 2 warmed up for her match with Coco Gauff at the Western & Southern Open on Wednesday.

Interesting, indeed. The wind was swirling around the main stadium in Mason, Ohio, and there was a lot swirling around Osaka as well. It has been a season of extremes for her. She has won her fourth major title, at the Australian Open, and lit the torch at the Tokyo Olympics. At the same time, she has withdrawn from Wimbledon, lost early in Tokyo, and struggled facing the media. When she heard about the earthquake earlier this week in Haiti, the country where her father was born, Osaka said she would donate her prize money to the relief effort.

“I’ve had a really weird year,” was how Osaka summed it up on court today.

You could see from the start of this match that Osaka was determined to block as much of that weirdness out as she could and focus on the task at hand. It wasn’t an easy one. This was her first match since Tokyo, and just her third since Roland Garros, and it was against Coco Gauff. Osaka had lost her last meeting to the 17-year-old, in Melbourne in 2020. She admitted later that it was a defeat she found particularly hard to accept.

It was easy to imagine, in the opening games on Wednesday, that Osaka would be forced to accept a second defeat at Gauff’s hands. The American has played a lot more tennis in 2021 than Osaka; she has been improving by the month; and she looked dauntingly solid in her easy win over Hsieh Su-wei on Tuesday.

Osaka had other ideas, though, and she looked sharp to start. She held in the first game with a forehand winner, and earned a couple of break points in Gauff’s opening service game. She had changed her return position slightly, to set up for a forehand, and it may have thrown off Gauff, who double faulted twice. But Osaka, and her forehand, weren’t ready to capitalize, and she missed returns from that side on both break points.

From that point until the middle of the second set, Gauff had the upper hand. She successfully countered Osaka’s return position by going straight into her forehand side, and she successfully countered Osaka’s powerful ground game with heavy, high-bouncing shots of her own. Gauff’s forehand has always been the weaker of her strokes, but her topspin from that side today looked impenetrable in the early going. Instead, it was Osaka’s forehand that continued to misfire.

That’s the way the match went through the first set, which Gauff won 6-4, and the first three games of the second. When she broke Osaka with another heavy forehand to go up 2-1 in the second, it looked like this was going to be Gauff’s day. More than that, it looked as if we might be seeing how Gauff would beat top players and win big titles in the future, with a game based around speed, spin, and unreturnable serves. Then, at 2-1, everything changed. Gauff missed a forehand. Osaka went back to her normal return position, and Gauff double faulted. At break point, Osaka played her forehand a little safer, and Gauff missed hers long.

The two players, and their respective forehands, had switched roles, and they would never switch back. Osaka took charge with her serve and found the range on her forehand, while Gauff lost the timing completely on her own forehand. She has improved that shot immensely, and we saw how effective it can be for a set and a half today. But then we saw that it remains a work in progress. As Gauff faltered, Osaka gained in confidence. She played good defense to break in the opening game of the third set, and held out from there. When I say she “held out,” I mean she won her last 18 service points, and held serve at love four straight times.

This third meeting between Osaka and Gauff was a tale of two forehands, and two players with different levels of experience. Gauff finished with 45 unforced errors and nine double faults, but she also showed how much she has improved, and gave us glimpses of what’s to come. For the first time in a few months, Osaka showed that she can block out everything that’s swirling around her, and find refuge on a tennis court again.

“This was a really good match,” Osaka said. “I changed my mindset: Even if I lost, I felt like I would be a winner.”

The crowd cheered.

“Just waking up in the morning is a win.”

The crowd cheered even louder. They seemed happy to see Naomi Osaka smiling, and winning, again.