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FLUSHING MEADOWS, N.Y. — Six long years ago, a 15-year-old tennis debutante faced a queen of the sport in front of 24,000 delirious fans on Arthur Ashe Stadium.
The match was unmemorable, even a little painful to watch at times. It ended in a 6-3, 6-0 drubbing, during which the teenager learned how bright the primetime spotlights can feel, even if — or maybe especially if — those 24,000 delirious fans have arrived for your coming out party.
For everyone who was there, or watching on television, the moment was unforgettable, as they so often are with Coco Gauff and Naomi Osaka. No torches were passed. No batons were grabbed. This was far more enduring than something as trite as that.
“We had a really special moment here that a lot of people remember,” Osaka said late Saturday afternoon, after her three-set win over Daria Kasatkina confirmed that this year’s U.S. Open would have its first blockbuster matchup.
It’s all about to happen again, after six years and a lot of life for both Gauff and Osaka, with each of them playing a far different role. Back then, before Gauff had entered the realm of athletes known solely by their first names, her parents and coaches wore t-shirts that said “Call me Coco” across the front. People were still referring to her by her formal name, Cori, which is her father’s name as well.
Whatever she was being called, it wasn’t her night.
“I remember it was a tough moment for me,” Gauff said after beating Magdalena Fręch, ahead of Osaka’s win over Kasatkina. “I put way too much pressure on myself thinking I maybe had a chance in that moment to actually do something, which I definitely did.
“I think it was that I just felt more expectation that I should, than maybe belief.”
When Gauff didn’t live up to her own outsized expectations — she was 15, Osaka was the world No.1 and defending champion — she reacted as one might expect a 15-year-old who was feeling like she had let herself and everyone down to react. Gauff was choking back tears at changeovers as Osaka rolled through the second set, before having to wipe them away when it was over.
And then the thing that made this match so unforgettable — but also surreal and a little strange, with discomfort as well as cheer — happened.
Mary Joe Fernández, the former pro and commentator, was standing on the court and readying herself for the post-match interview with the winner. She was keeping an eye on Gauff, who went to gather her rackets, her bag, her water bottles and likely those plastic containers of cut-up fruit that she brings to most matches.
She and everyone else were waiting to give Gauff that round of rousing applause that the player who comes up short gets on the walkoff. But then Fernandez saw Osaka going over to Gauff.
She figured Osaka was checking to see if Gauff was OK. But then they kept talking, and Fernandez started to overhear some of what they were saying and to realize what was going on.
Osaka, who is half-Japanese and half-Haitian but grew up mostly in America, had anointed herself an ESPN producer. She was trying to convince Gauff to join her in the middle of the court to speak to the crowd with her and Fernandez. Most of them had come out to see her, Osaka had told her. Why not speak to them? And then it looked like Gauff was actually going to listen to Osaka’s advice
“And then I realized I was going to be doing a dual interview,” Fernandez recalled this weekend. “That’s not something you experience very often.”
There’s a decent chance she will never experience an interview quite like that again.
Fernández might have been the perfect person to do the interview. Her husband Tony Godsick, Roger Federer’s agent and partner, represented Gauff at the time. Fernández had known Gauff since her pre-teen years. This was sort of like talking to a family friend.
Gauff and Osaka wandered over to the microphones. The crowd roared, which just made Gauff cry more. Whatever comfort Osaka was providing, she was still going through something unpleasant in front of tens of thousands in person and many many more on television.
Fernandez stated the obvious, telling Gauff that the crowd, who had urged her on through a painful night, loved her. Then she asked Gauff what Osaka had told her at the net.
“She told me that I did amazing and good luck,” Gauff said, her voice shaky and her fingers wiping away the tears. “Then she asked if I could do the on-court interview with her and I said no because I knew I was going to cry the whole time, but she encouraged me to do it.”
Deep breaths, more roars.
Fernandez then asked a question that included some comfort as well.
“You’re only 15, Coco,” Fernandez told her. “This is your first U.S. Open in the main draw. What has the experience been like tonight, playing against one of the very best in the world and the world No. 1, Naomi?”
Gauff said it had been an amazing experience. She complimented Osaka, calling her amazing. Then she had something else to say as she thanked Osaka again.
“I don’t want people to think that I’m trying to take this moment away from her, because she really deserves it, so thank you.”
Osaka nodded. There was another hug. And then the interview turned to her, but not quite. Osaka had something to say to the family of her opponent, the kid she had seen often at training centers in South Florida where they both lived and Gauff still does.
“You guys raised an amazing player,” Osaka said. “I remember I used to see you guys,” but then she was crying, too. Fernandez tried to settle her down. “I remember I used to see you guys training in the same place as us and for me, the fact that both of us made it, and we’re both still working as hard as we can, I think it’s incredible.
“And I think you guys are amazing. I think Coco, you’re amazing.”
Gauff had put on her warm-up jacket and thrown her racket bag on her back. She watched Osaka speak like a kid waiting for the school bus.
There was one more hug, and the night was through.
Coco Gauff and Naomi Osaka’s upcoming U.S. Open match will be far removed from that night in 2019. (Eric Rasco / Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)
Things are a little different now.
Gauff, a two-time Grand Slam champion at 21, is the world’s highest-paid female athlete and the biggest star of this tournament, even as she struggles to restructure her serve during the crucible of her most important competition of the year. Her image decorates billboards and video screens everywhere on the grounds and in the city.
Osaka, a four-time Grand Slam champion at 27, is no longer the $50-million-a-year billboard star she once was, but she retains the gravity of a superstar as she climbs her way back up the rankings after a series of pauses in her career: to figure out how balancing tennis and her wellbeing works for her, and to give birth to her first child, Shai.
But her recent form suggests that she now might not be too far off where she was when she made that night with teenage Gauff unforgettable, the place where Gauff has been for much of the past two years.
Reliving that night, which feels both like yesterday and long ago, is just a few keystrokes away. Is everything different, or is it all the same? It’s not really clear.
They are not close friends, Gauff said, but she remains a huge supporter of Osaka, a trailblazer and another Black female tennis player reared in America, with all the challenges that experience entails. Both were outspoken in their own ways during the summer of 2020, when demonstrations followed the murder of George Floyd and the shooting of Jacob Blake. They admire one another, but where Gauff was once chasing Osaka, Osaka is now chasing her Gauff. The younger American also plays a pivotal role in what Osaka pursues now.
Two years ago, Osaka came to the U.S. Open just two months after giving birth. She came with Michael Phelps, the Olympic champion swimmer, to help raise awareness for the mental health challenges that athletes face.
She announced that she planned to return to tennis in 2024. The night of the event with Phelps, she sat courtside as Gauff took on Karolína Muchová in the semifinals of the U.S. Open that would become her first Grand Slam title. When Osaka did return to tennis and to the Billie Jean King Tennis Center for the 2024 U.S. Open, she recalled why watching that match had left such an impression on her.
“I came and watched Coco play her semis, and I was in the audience and I didn’t know if I was going to be able to play again at this level,” she said in a news conference after her first-round match against Jelena Ostapenko that year.
It left an impression for another reason. Gauff had turned out to be amazing, just as Osaka had predicted in that interview in 2019. She remains something of a work in progress, an astonishing talent with glaring weaknesses in her serve and forehand that she is trying desperately to fix at the most inconvenient time, but in her own way so does Osaka, four Grand Slam titles down.
They are 2-2 overall, not including a meeting in Beijing last year when Osaka had to retire with an injury after they had split two sets.
Now, nearly two years into a comeback that has taken longer than she thought it would, and six years and one day since that first meeting, Osaka has her chance to be amazing at Arthur Ashe Stadium once again.
(Photo: Tim Clayton / Corbis via Getty Images)
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