Japan’s Naomi Osaka has won the Australian Open for a second time with a 6-4, 6-3 victory over American Jennifer Brady.
The 23-year-old third-seed Osaka now has four grand slam titles with Melbourne crowns from 2019 and 2021 joining her US Open triumphs in 2018 and 2020. She maintained her record of never having lost at a major from the quarter-final stage onwards, Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) reported.
Brady, 25, ran to her maiden grand slam final as 22nd seed despite spending two weeks in hard coronavirus quarantine in the run-up to the event.
Osaka saved a break point in the ninth game before capitalizing on Brady going long and then netting on her next serve to claim the crucial first set.
Improving after a slow start in tricky windy conditions, Osaka raced to 4-0 in the second set and though Brady pulled a break back, Osaka served out to claim the win in front of a reduced capacity crowd amid global pandemic.
BNA News