In the final, Naomi Osaka achieved a miraculous resurrection. She was 1: 6, 0: 2 behind after 34 minutes, but prevailed after one hour and 53 minutes with 1: 6, 6: 3, 6: 3.
The final didn’t quite live up to expectations. A grandiose final was expected because both Osaka and Asarenka – both former number 1 in the world – had survived the month undefeated in the New York bubble. Asarenka and Osaka reached the final in the preparatory tournament. However, the Japanese did not compete for this because of thigh problems.
The final was seldom a top-class finish because both players were never at their best at the same time. First, the 31-year-old Belarusian won eight of the first nine games; Osaka then dominated with 12 of 16 games won.
Naomi Osaka won her third Grand Slam title in two years after the 2018 US Open and the 2019 Australian Open. The young Japanese woman made history – not only because she was invincible from the quarter-finals onwards at major tournaments, but because she was the first Asian tennis professional (men and women) to win three major titles.
Despite the final defeat, Viktoria Asarenka dominated the New York tennis high-security zone last month. She wrote one of those dishwasher stories that Americans like so much. Asarenka said before the final that seven and a half years ago, when she won the Australian Open for the second time and regularly put the elite on hard courts, she had expected to reach the final at the US Open at some point.
In her prime, Asarenka never achieved this goal because she was too dogged, too ambitious and put too much pressure on herself. For the US Open 2020 nobody had the 31-year-old Belarusian on the bill.
Asarenka was out for more than a year in 2016 because of the baby break. She later stayed away for a long time because of a custody dispute over son Leo. From the beginning of August 2019 until she entered the New York “Bubble”, she did not win a single single for more than a year. With twelve victories in a row (including the forfait victory over Osaka in the preparatory tournament), she improved in the ranking from 59th place (start of the Cincinnati tournament) to 27th (start of the US Open) to 14th place in the world (after the US Open).
Tournament winner Naomi Osaka improved in the ranking from 9th to 4th place.
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