With power and fortitude, Osaka outplays her idol to advance to Australian Open final

That would be the American Jennifer Brady, ranked No. 24, and that would be a rematch of a 2020 U.S. Open semifinal Osaka won by 7-6 (7-1), 3-6, 6-3. Brady, who has found her inner titan in her mid-20s after playing collegiately at UCLA and toiling on the back roads thereafter, found that rematch by outlasting No. 27-ranked Karolina Muchova of the Czech Republic, 6-4, 3-6, 6-4 in the second semifinal.

By the middle of that match, Williams had met with reporters, had heard a closing question about a tough day that followed a sequence of good days, and had wept, stood and departed. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m done.”

One answer earlier, when Karen Crouse of the New York Times asked what it might have meant when she tapped her heart toward the pandemic-sparse crowd while exiting the court, Williams said, “I don’t know. If I ever say farewell, I wouldn’t tell anyone, so . . .” and she smiled.

Her 2021 Australian Open that brimmed with her renewed fitness and mobility wound up closing down in a match that began with Osaka looking nervous and veered into Osaka looking like some supernova in the Australian sun.

First, the 23-year-old trailed 2-0 and would say later, “I don’t know, it’s very intimidating to serve for the first game and see her on the other side of the net.” Next, opting to “try to play within myself instead of thinking about what she would do,” Osaka used her power to fend off troubles — a break point serving at 0-2, three game points while Williams served at 2-1 — and sprang in a flash from 0-2 to 6-3, 2-0.

She closed the last game of that sequence with a pair of aces. She crushed groundstrokes and crashed serves, the latter a budding knack sure to help make her pure hell for opponents for years to come. From 0-15 while serving at 6-3, 3-2, Osaka killed the mild inconvenience with two service winners and an ace. When Williams wound up saying, “It was a big error day for me today,” it sounded like self-reassurance for a 39-year-old, given the stat sheet showed a narrow error margin: Williams 24, Osaka 21.

They also showed these things: 6-3 in aces (to Osaka), 8-1 in double faults (to Osaka’s disfavor, lending her win even further impression), 20-12 in winners (to Osaka), 4-for-4 in break points (for Osaka, to 2-for-7 for Williams). All told, Osaka rather resembled the Williams of 23 storied years and 23 Grand Slam titles, rendered irrelevant both Williams’s renowned offense and improved defense, and reprised her 6-2, 6-4 thrashing of Williams in the 2018 U.S. Open final, one of the snags in Williams’s four-year expedition for more big hardware since giving birth in September 2017.

Only once did Osaka’s waver, when she managed to double-fault thrice in a single game while serving at 4-3 in the second set. When the last fault strayed just wide up the middle and closed out the game with Williams set to serve at 4-4, it appeared some kind of match might be on.

Some kind of match was not on, as from there, Osaka won the last eight points to drop the curtain. She broke Williams’s serve at love with a whole bale of mastery: steering a gasp of a backhand up the line for a clean winner, yanking a wickedly angled backhand crosscourt for another clean winner, watching a Williams double fault conclude into the net, and smacking two scary crosscourt forehands that set up a winning backhand.

So she served for the match. She began with an ace up the middle, continued with a service to the T that caused Williams to launch a forehand wide, continued with a service to the corner that caused Williams to send a forehand awry partway to Adelaide, and finished with a fourth troublesome serve that led to a brief rally and Williams’s netting of a final backhand.

Then Osaka greeted Williams at the net with a slight bow and a clear reverence and a gentle hug, of which Osaka said later, “Yeah, for me, I felt, it’s like it was a surreal moment, even just to see her in real life, like close-up.” That means she not only has a chance at a second Australian Open title to go with her two U.S. Open titles. It means she twice has mastered the hard art of defeating an idol, especially one on a long quest still ongoing.