A hooded entrance, then a nervy night
Osaka walked into Arthur Ashe Stadium wearing a grey hooded dress, peeled it off to reveal an Allen Iverson tribute, and then spent the next two hours making life difficult for herself. She still won. Anastasia Zakharova dragged her into two tiebreaks overnight and lost both of them, 7-6, 7-6.
The opening was almost too easy. A double fault was all Osaka conceded in the first game. She broke straight back, led 2-0, and gave away nothing on her face either way.
Then the match turned. Zakharova found her length, traded games for a while, and levelled at 5-5 with two clean strikes in the tenth. Osaka piled up errors, added a double fault on serve and fell behind for the first time. A little over an hour had gone before she finally punched a winner into the corner and allowed herself a fist pump.
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The serve that ended it
The second set ran the same script with the roles reversed. Osaka climbed out of a 40-0 hole to break in the fifth game and looked set to close things out early. Zakharova refused. A 16-shot rally helped her back to 5-5, then to 6-5, and suddenly Osaka was serving to stay in the set.
She threw her racket. Four straight points followed, capped by a 120 mph serve that sent Zakharova stumbling backwards. The tiebreak barely happened at all, 7-3. Ten of her eleven aces on the night came in that second set, which tells you where the match was decided.
What it sets up
Osaka reached the semi-finals here last year before running into Amanda Anisimova. Her 2026 has been a steady climb rather than a breakthrough: a fourth round at Roland Garros, a quarter-final at Wimbledon, career bests at both. No title yet this season, though she arrived in New York off a semi-final run in Washington and a quarter-final in Canada.
Katerina Siniakova is next. On the evidence of the night session, the serve is exactly where Osaka wants it and the rest of her game is still catching up.
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