At the 2021 Australian Open, Naomi Osaka showed the world once again why she's one of the most feared opponents on the tennis court when she walked towards the trophy in a dominant way.
The 23-years-old Japanese player lost only 1 set on her way to the title. First, she defeated Pavlyuchenkova, Garcia and Jabeur to avoid 2 match points against Muguruza who was the only player to win a set against Naomi Osaka at the 2021 Australian Open.
Then, she defeated also Su-Wei Hsieh and Serena Williams to set up a final with Jennifer Brady. The young American played her first Grand Slam final in career, as 25th-seeded Karolina Muchova was the highest-ranked player she met on her journey to the final.
Despite great qualities of Brady, Naomi Osaka showed who is the real favorite in the final and also the experience from her previous Grand Slam finals was obvious. In the first set, the American put up a great fight. She came back from losing 1-3 and had also a breakpoint to get a 5-4 lead in the first set.
However, that's when the experience showed and Osaka won 3 points in a row to fight off the break point. In the next game, Osaka was down 40-15 on her return game as Brady was looking to level the score again, however, she managed to win 4 points in a row to win the first set.
In the second part of the match, we witnessed a much more dominant performance by the new world number 2. Osaka got a quick 4-0 lead and it seemed that the match will end soon when she had also a game point on her service to make it 5-0. However, Brady put one last hurdle between Osaka and the trophy and took one break back.
That didn't stop Osaka from using the advantage of one break and marching towards her 4th Grand Slam title after winning 6-4, 6-3. She also became the first player since Maria Sharapova in 2012 to win the fourth Grand Slam title and on Monday, she will move to second place of the WTA Rankings.