{"id":123090,"date":"2025-08-31T15:53:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-31T15:53:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/123090\/"},"modified":"2025-08-31T15:53:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-31T15:53:11","slug":"u-s-open-recap-day-7-naomi-osaka-returns-to-grand-slam-second-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/123090\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Open recap Day 7: Naomi Osaka returns to Grand Slam second week"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Athletic has live coverage of the 2025 U.S. Open<\/a>, and you can follow all the U.S. Open coverage<\/a>, too.<\/p>\n

Welcome to the U.S. Open<\/a> briefing, where The Athletic\u00a0will explain the stories behind the stories on each day of the tournament.<\/p>\n

On Day 7, a star got back to a long-awaited milestone, the tournament\u2019s five-set heroes hit a wall, and a defending champion escaped adversity.<\/p>\n

Naomi Osaka climbs back after four years away<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s something a little hard to believe. The last time Naomi Osaka<\/a> was in the second week of a Grand Slam, much of the world remained half-closed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n

The second week of the 2021 Australian Open included a snap lockdown. It had Osaka playing matches in nearly empty stadiums before she beat Jennifer Brady to win the fourth of her four Grand Slam titles to date. Osaka had yet to be vulnerable in public about the impact of the sport on her well-being. She hadn\u2019t taken any of her breaks from the tour to manage that impact, nor her 16-month hiatus for pregnancy and childbirth.<\/p>\n

But with a stirring three-set win over Daria Kasatkina of Australia on Saturday, Osaka set up a fourth-round U.S. Open date with Coco Gauff<\/a>, a can\u2019t-miss match if ever there was one. It\u2019s where Osaka wished she had been for going on two years, ever since she started her tennis comeback in 2024.<\/p>\n

She has come close twice. At both the Australian Open and Wimbledon this year, she fell one match short.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince I\u2019ve come back, I kind of wanted everything to happen really quickly,\u201d Osaka said after her 6-0, 4-6, 6-3 win. It took the Wimbledon loss to revert to focusing on process rather than results, as she had been doing through most of last year. Then things turned; now they have turned back.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a journey, it\u2019s not something that I really pictured, but I\u2019m glad to be living it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The run is also a victory for Tomasz Wiktorowski, Iga \u015awi\u0105tek\u2019s former coach who replaced Patrick Mouratoglou<\/a> on team Osaka in July. Mouratoglou replaced Wim Fissette last year. Fissette, who helped Osaka to two Grand Slam titles, is now coaching \u015awi\u0105tek and won Wimbledon with her.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Matt Futterman<\/p>\n

Jannik Sinner meets a familiar enemy \u2014 and prevails again<\/p>\n

There are two players who have really pushed Jannik Sinner at the Grand Slams this year \u2014 who are not named Carlos Alcaraz.<\/p>\n

One is Bulgaria\u2019s Grigor Dimitrov, who led the world No. 1 by two sets before injury cruelly struck at Wimbledon<\/a>. Saturday at the U.S. Open, Canada\u2019s Denis Shapovalov made his party of one a duet. Shapovalov won the first set, had a point for a double-break lead in the third and another one for a break back in the final game of the fourth before ultimately succumbing to Sinner 5-7, 6-4, 6-3, 6-3.<\/p>\n

There are some obvious links between the two. Both are flashy shotmakers who play with a single-handed backhand, which is increasingly rare in professional tennis. Both used the backhand slice very effectively to move the Italian out of position before pulling the trigger on both wings into the space he had vacated. Both also served exceptionally well for the period in which they were in the ascendancy.<\/p>\n

The extent to which this is a repeatable formula outside of serving is limited, as very few players on the tour have as much upside on the backhand slice combined with ball speed to keep Sinner off balance. Saturday was still a reminder that he isn\u2019t invulnerable and can get flustered, especially in the heat of the afternoon.<\/p>\n

As he said himself with a smile in his post-match news conference: \u201cI\u2019m not a machine, you know. I also struggle sometimes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014 Charlie Eccleshare<\/p>\n

The U.S. Open\u2019s five-setters hit a wall in New York<\/p>\n

There was a grim inevitability about Flavio Cobolli\u2019s mid-match retirement against his compatriot Lorenzo Musetti Saturday. Cobolli had 10 sets in his legs, and that tends to be detrimental to a player\u2019s chances in a major these days, if not a death knell against an opponent of the No. 10 seed\u2019s quality. A right arm injury was what did it for Cobolli on this occasion, who retired down 6-3, 6-2, 2-0.<\/p>\n

Later that, Kamil Majchrzak had to retire hurt in the first set of his match against Leandro Reidi. In his previous match, Majchrzak had beaten No. 9 seed Karen Khachanov and saved match points before winning in a fifth-set tiebreak. He won the first three games against Riedi but was visibly hampered from the start and never looked like finishing the first set, let alone reaching the third round. It was little surprise he should succumb to the physical toll that a match longer than 4 1\/2 hours puts on a player\u2019s body.<\/p>\n

And then Daniel Altmaier, who beat Stefanos Tsitsipas in five in the previous round, suffered the same fate as Majchrzak and Cobolli against Alex de Minaur.<\/p>\n

A similar dynamic played out at the Australian Open in January, when there was a sequence of retirements and physical blowouts on the middle weekend from players who couldn\u2019t withstand the rigors of consistent five-set tennis.<\/p>\n

At first glance, it suggests playing five sets at Grand Slams<\/a> is not entirely fit for purpose. If match lengths have increased and the depth of talent on the tour has grown to such an extent that a couple of five-set matches put too much of a physical strain on a player, then there is an issue.<\/p>\n

The sheer volume of tennis played has also increased, however. The rest of the tournaments on the ATP Tour are three sets, but the biggest tournaments below the Grand Slams, the Masters 1000s, have extended from one week to 12 days. It is not that a format played four times per year, with days off between matches, is an outlier so much that five sets is an even more physically taxing cherry on top of an ever-growing cake. That growth then dilutes the quality of the most visible and important product in tennis, with the early rounds wearing down players who are carrying accumulated fatigue from the rest of the calendar.<\/p>\n

The best players don\u2019t or shouldn\u2019t become embroiled in multiple five-set matches early on, and a seed like Cobolli might feel he only has himself to blame after being taken the distance in matches he should have won a lot more comfortably. However, the ultimate result of matches getting longer and more physical is that on the men\u2019s side, only a few players can be truly competitive at the sharp end of slams. For most, a couple of five-set matches and that\u2019s them pretty much done.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Charlie Eccleshare<\/p>\n

Other notable results on Day 7<\/p>\n

\u2022 Coco Gauff (3) set up the Osaka clash with an\u00a0ordinary win during what has so far for her been an extraordinary tournament. Gauff beat No. 28 seed Magdalena Fr\u0119ch<\/a> 6-3, 6-1 in a straightforward match that followed two challenging, surreal and at times emotional wins on Arthur Ashe Stadium.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Andrey Rublev (15) survived a scare against Coleman Wong, the qualifier from Hong Kong who this week became its first man to win a Grand Slam match in the Open era. Wong led by a set and came back to force a decider from 2-1 down, but Rublev prevailed 2-6, 6-4, 6-3, 4-6, 6-3.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Iga \u015awi\u0105tek (2) produced an even more remarkable comeback to open the night session.\u00a0Anna Kalinskaya (29)\u00a0led the Wimbledon champion 5-1 on Arthur Ashe Stadium, but \u015awi\u0105tek fought her way into a tiebreak and took the set and then the match a little while later, 7-6(2), 6-4.<\/p>\n

\u2022 And Tommy Paul (14)\u00a0almost did the impossible against\u00a0Alexander Bublik (23)\u00a0in his second five-setter on Arthur Ashe Stadium in a row. Despite being on the edge physically for at least the last two sets, he ran Bublik close before bowing out as the Kazakh triumphed 7-6(5), 6-7(4), 6-3, 6-7(5), 6-1.<\/p>\n

Shot\u00a0of the day<\/p>\n

Jannik Sinner and Denis Shapovalov produced one of the points of the tournament.<\/p>\n

Up next<\/p>\n

\ud83c\udfbe Jessica Pegula (4) vs. Ann Li
11 a.m. ET on ESPN2\/ESPN+<\/p>\n

Li, who reached her first WTA Tour final in seven months at the final warm-up tournament before this U.S. Open, gets another crack at Pegula at a Grand Slam in 2025. They met in the first round of the French Open, in which Li, 25, took her more experienced and higher-ranked opponent to a second-set tiebreak before ultimately losing.<\/p>\n

\ud83c\udfbe Barbora Krej\u010d\u00edkov\u00e1 vs. Taylor Townsend
2 p.m. ET (estimated) on ESPN2\/ESPN+<\/p>\n

Townsend, who has become the star of the tournament the past few days, gets a singles matchup in which most of the intrigue comes from doubles pedigree. Krej\u010d\u00edkov\u00e1 has a major singles-court advantage with her two Grand Slam titles, but she and Townsend are both Grand Slam doubles champions. Townsend used her doubles skills to fillet No. 5 seed Mirra Andreeva in the previous round; Krej\u010d\u00edkov\u00e1 will be able to see them coming.<\/p>\n

\ud83c\udfbe Tom\u00e1\u0161 Mach\u00e1\u010d (21) vs. Taylor Fritz (4)
4 p.m. ET (estimated) on ESPN2\/ESPN+<\/p>\n

Another match full of intrigue, for very different reasons. Mach\u00e1\u010d, a Czech with all the talent in the world but whose body has a habit of letting him down, last met Fritz, the 2024 U.S. Open finalist, at January\u2019s United Cup. They played the men\u2019s singles rubber in the mixed international team competition, and Mach\u00e1\u010d led 7-6(4), 5-6 \u2014 after Fritz had saved two match points down 5-2 in the second set \u2014 when he abruptly retired with cramp in his legs.<\/p>\n

\ud83c\udfbe Elena Rybakina (9) vs. Mark\u00e9ta Vondrou\u0161ov\u00e1
9:30 p.m. ET (estimated) on ESPN2\/ESPN+<\/p>\n

A fascinating contrast of styles between two Wimbledon champions closes the night session on Arthur Ashe Stadium. Rybakina\u2019s devastating power and linear attack stand against Vondrou\u0161ov\u00e1\u2019s trigonometric variety, but both players execute their games with a languid effortlessness that emphasizes their talent. Vondrou\u0161ov\u00e1 will look to keep the ball out of the Kazakh\u2019s strike zone, and Rybakina will look to get her Czech opponent outside the sidelines before it happens to her.<\/p>\n

U.S. Open men\u2019s draw 2025U.S. Open women\u2019s draw 2025<\/p>\n

Tell us what you noticed on the seventh day \u2026<\/p>\n

(Illustration: Eamonn Dalton \/ The Athletic \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Athletic has live coverage of the 2025 U.S. Open, and you can follow all the U.S. Open…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":123091,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-123090","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123090\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}