US Open 2025 – Osaka & Gauff: positive thinking

Simple game plans and new mantra

And Osaka won. She won with ease; she won with a smile and she clobbered Gauff 6-3, 6-2 in a brisk 64 minutes. Now aged 27 and the mother of a two-year-old daughter, Shai, she is enjoying what she refers to as the “second set” of her career. So far, the second set is going well.

Osaka also thinks of Gauff as her baby sister: she wants her to do well. But not on this particular Monday afternoon.

Osaka was launched on to the world stage when she beat Serena Williams here in 2018. It was a tense and controversial match – Serena was docked a game penalty for coaching (which was not allowed in those days) and for her subsequent behaviour. The New York crowd booed loud and long to the point that Serena, to her eternal credit, told them to stop and to applaud their new champion from Japan. Osaka was in floods of tears.

By the end of January the following year – and now the Australian Open champion – she was the world No.1. But the pressure proved too much; Osaka was just 21 and she could not cope with the relentless questioning of her every move and the expectation that she should beat every player in front of her.

By the time she got to Roland-Garros in 2021 – and with another US and Australian Open title to her name – she refused to do any press conferences. She could not deal with the pressure any longer and, suffering from depression, she stepped back from the tour for a while.

However, after having Shai and coming back to the tour in 2024, Osaka seemed renewed. Her tennis was not where she wanted it to be but she kept working until now, having hired Iga Swiatek’s former coach Tomasz Wiktorowski, she is back on track. And into the US Open quarter-finals.

Wiktorowski has provided simple game plans. As she faced Gauff, it was clear for all to see what those instructions were: attack the serve and the forehand. She did just that with relentless efficiency but she also had another mantra to live by: try your best and have a smile on your face. She was loving every minute of her time on the Arthur Ashe Stadium. That made a huge difference.

On the other side of the net, Gauff looked miserable. She coughed up five double faults which, by her recent standards, was decent, but she could not find a way to land a glove on Osaka. When the match was over, she was off court and heading back to the locker room in a flash. The champion of Roland-Garros needed to be somewhere other than in the spotlight.

Gauff’s serving demons

Gauff’s serving yips have blighted her summer and her double fault score has regularly reached double figures. To stop the rot, she hired Gavin MacMillan, the biomechanics specialist who worked on Aryna Sabalenka’s wayward serve three years ago. But they only started working in Cincinnati, the week before the US Open – it is very early days in their relationship.

Coming to New York, Gauff knew the TV cameras would be on her wherever she went and whenever she played but she was determined to brazen it out: if she was going to fail in her home Grand Slam, so be it. Gauff has a backbone of steel. Now, though, she has the chance to go and work – in private – with MacMillan to sort out her serving issues. That is the upside.

But once the match was over, she looked weary and resigned to her lot. “It's been tough I post-Roland-Garros for me for sure,” she said. “I know the improvements that I need to make, and I feel like I'm making the right decision by making them. I wish I had more time between this tournament and Cincinnati, but that's the cards that I was given.”

Coco is moving on

As Osaka heads happily towards her quarter-final with Karolina Muchova, Gauff is plotting her work schedule and her goals for the coming months and sounds relieved.

“I have no choice but to do a training block between now and Beijing, the next tournament I'm signed up for,” she said. “I've said this every year: after the US Open, for me, it's just improvement mode to get ready for Australia.

“I think there's a lot of positives to take from this tournament, and I'm trying to be positive. I don't feel that way right now, but I am not going to let this crush me. I look forward to the future and making more improvements. Hopefully next year I can grow a lot as a player and as a person.”

If “baby sis” can sort out her serving issues and follow “big sis” by getting that smile back on her face then maybe the champion of Roland-Garros can make 2026 a year to remember.