US Open 2018: With an infectious sense of humour and positive attitude to match, Naomi Osaka can never fly low

Aryna Sabalenka is fast. The Belarusian up-and-comer is six feet of long limbs and muscle, but her movement never seems hampered by any of it. She is having a breakout season with a semi-final run at Cincinnati and a title at New Haven, and in the third round of the US Open she hit another power-baseliner, Petra Kvitova, off the court. In the first couple of games against Japan’s Naomi Osaka, Sabalenka showed off some of that quickness, both side-to-side and in her transition game. She was quick to charge to the net or hit Osaka’s rockets back behind her fellow 20-year-old. Osaka was quick to recognise a game like hers and make the required adjustments. She had Sabalenka constantly moving and came up with her share of backhand cross-court or running forehand winners. Osaka prevailed in a topsy-turvy match, creating several chances to break in the third set to make her first Grand Slam quarter-final after lurking between the third and fourth rounds for the last couple of years. Osaka’s is the most audible apology on a tennis court. If she is not happy with her ball toss, she catches it and lets out a calm “Sorry!” — the kind that one might say after accidentally bumping into someone on a crowded street — to her opponent that can be heard even if you are watching on television. In about two years and change of being in the spotlight, she has established herself as the player who wears her heart on her sleeve and with an infectious sense of humour. [caption id=“attachment_5114651” align=“alignnone” width=“825”]  With her victory over Aryna Sabalenka, Naomi Osaka made her first entry into a Grand Slam quarter-final. AP[/caption] She is only 20-years-old but she already has YouTube video compilations of “Best of Naomi Osaka | Press Conference Highlights”. She routinely figures in the list of funniest quotes of the year from a tennis player. She is young, just out of her teens, and she might talk like she is a kid at a tennis club playing sets for fun, joking about what happened during a point or what someone said to her before the match. Osaka is undeniably American, having roamed around the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center as a kid and attended Kids’ days during US Opens past. She also loves Japan, its people and cuisine. At the 2016 Australian Open, after upsetting then Top 20 Elina Svitolina as a qualifier, Osaka got Japan’s arc lights positioned over her. Osaka, who grew up mostly in Florida, was expected to take questions in Japanese and she had to embarrassingly inform that she doesn’t speak the language. She is mature enough to realise the weight of her lineage: She was born in Osaka, Japan, but also half-black from her Haitian father. Two years on, she is in her first Grand Slam quarter final. After English, she now takes questions in Japanese. Osaka had been on a streak even before the Sabalenka match. She had won 22 games on the trot before the start of her fourth round. Her only title so far is one of the big ones — the Indian Wells tournament this year. When Osaka wins, she wins big, just like her forehand that she can hit from and to any part of the court. In the match against Sabalenka, she was also putting more returns in play considering Sabalenka’s strong serve. At an earlier press conference, Osaka elaborated on how she wrestles with herself on return games, how one part of her wants to hit a down-the-line return winner and another wants to play it safe and not go down the line, and how until the last moment she wants to play it safe but ends up hitting down the line for an unforced error anyway. Osaka, with all her powerful weapons, can be disarming like that. Last year she spoke about how a commercial for mesothelioma awareness got stuck in her head during practice and kept playing in her head all through the time she was hitting with her coach. With Osaka, there is never a dull moment. Not during a match, not during the interviews after her wins and losses, not in her Instagram where she posts pictures of her and her team dining out with Kei Nishikori. At the 2016 US Open, in the third round, she lost to Madison Keys after being 5-1 up in the third set. She talked about bad memories at the US Open and how they lodge themselves at the back of her mind during a match. When asked if she’s a much different, stronger player now, she agreed the experience helps but also cheekily added that people keep bringing up that match all the time. It wasn’t said in an accusatory or I-am-tired-of-this-nonsense tone. It was stated in a matter-of-fact manner with her typical wryness. The life expectancy of that attitude will probably determine how far Osaka can go in her career and by current evidence, the answer is pretty far. The good news is that Osaka has a winnable set of matches to look ahead. She plays Ukraine’s unseeded Lesia Tsurenko in the quarter-final and if she gets through that, she’ll face Keys or Carla Suarez Navarro. While favourites like Serena Williams and Sloane Stephens battle it out on the other side of the draw, Osaka can expect to go relatively under the radar. But a character like Osaka can never fly low, especially when her fortunes are on the rise. Along with a running passing shot, she might also come up with a quip or two during her on-court interview that would make the highlight reels for years to come. In the long run, for Osaka, the good memories will outlive the bad ones.