NEW YORK, NEW YORK – SEPTEMBER 01: Naomi Osaka of Japan reacts against Coco Gauff of the United States during their Women’s Singles Fourth Round match on Day Nine of the 2025 US Open at USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center on September 1, 2025 in the Flushing neighborhood of the Queens borough of New York City. (Photo by Sarah Stier/Getty Images)
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Naomi Osaka views Coco Gauff as her “little sister” and on Monday big sister taught the youngster a lesson.
Playing her biggest match since becoming a mother two years ago, No. 23 Osaka started the match with great intensity and maintained dominant form while out-playing No. 3 Gauff, 6-3, 6-2 in 64 minutes, before a capacity crowd in Arthur Ashe Stadium to advance to the US Open quarterfinals. By ranking, it was Osaka’s biggest win in a major.
“This is the more consistent, improved Naomi Osaka playing here,” 18-time major champion Chrissie Evert said on ESPN.
Osaka is a four-time major champion, but her last Grand Slam title came at the Australian Open in 2021 and her last US Open crown was in 2020. Her daughter, Shai, was born in 2023.
Osaka will next face either No. 11 Karolina Muchova or No. 27 Marta Kostyuk on Wednesday.
Osaka will earn $660,000 for reaching the quarterfinals, and would make $1,260,000 for making the semis. The winner takes home $5 million.
“I think it’s more for me the journey getting back here,” Osaka said ahead of the match. “Then obviously we had a really special moment here that a lot of people remember [during their third-round match in 2019, won by Osaka]
. For me she’s the main star of the US Open. I didn’t play on Ashe yet. So it’s just a combination of all those things.
“Then, also, after I had Shai (her daughter), I came to the US Open to watch her play Muchova I think. It was a semifinal (2023). I just feel happy, because I feel like all of my hard work is amounting to something.”
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – SEPTEMBER 01: Coco Gauff of the United States reacts against Naomi Osaka of Japan during their Women’s Singles Fourth Round match on Day Nine of the 2025 US Open at USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center on September 1, 2025 in the Flushing neighborhood of the Queens borough of New York City. (Photo by Sarah Stier/Getty Images)
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Gauff is a two-time major champion, having won Roland Garros earlier this year and the US Open in 2023, but she is now just 7-5 since the French Open. She replaced her coach ahead of the Open and replaced him with biomechanics expert Gavin MacMillan in order to improve her serve.
Still, Gauff struggled in the first set and double-faulted on set point. She committed 11 unforced errors and 16 total unforced errors in the first set.
“She’s guiding the ball, she’s not hitting with conviction or authority,” Evert said.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – SEPTEMBER 01: Naomi Osaka of Japan returns a shot against Coco Gauff of the United States during their Women’s Singles Fourth Round match on Day Nine of the 2025 US Open at USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center on September 1, 2025 in the Flushing neighborhood of the Queens borough of New York City. (Photo by Sarah Stier/Getty Images)
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Coming into the match, Osaka pleaded with fans to root for her against the American.
“I hope, can somebody come to the match and choose for me because, I mean it’s kind of tough playing an American here, but I hope you guys kind of adopted me as well,” she said Saturday.
The fans were muted, hoping Gauff could make a match of it, but she was never able to get the crowd into the match.
Gauff and Osaka first met in the third round of the US Open in 2019, when the top-seeded Osaka dominated the then-15-year-old Gauff, 6-3, 6-0, in Gauff’s Arthur Ashe Stadium debut. After the match, Osaka consoled Gauff and asked her to do the post-match interview with her.
“My recollections were that I remember just knowing that she was going to be a really great tennis player, which I was right,” Osaka said. But yeah, she was, what, 15 at the time? I thought she just handled herself really well, and I knew she was going to be back there.
“Now to be playing her again after six years, I don’t know if that makes me old, but yeah, just to be at this point of my life and to be playing her again is honestly, for me, feels kind of special.”
They most recently met in November 2024 in Beijing when Gauff came back from 4-3 down to win the last three games of the set before Osaka retired due to a lower back injury at 3-6, 6-4.
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamzagoria/2025/09/01/naomi-osaka-dominates-coco-gauff-to-reach-us-open-quarterfinals/
