When Sabalenka and Osaka faced each other for the first time almost eight years ago in New York, they were both 20 years old and rapidly rising up the rankings.<\/p>\n
Both players have said the fourth-round match, which Japan’s Osaka won 6-3 2-6 6-4, was a turning point in their careers.<\/p>\n
“I felt like we both were kind of upcoming, [the] next generation,” said top seed Sabalenka.<\/p>\n
“When she won that match, I had a feeling she is going to win a Slam.”<\/p>\n
The Belarusian – who had been a break up in the deciding set – was right. Five days later, Osaka beat Serena Williams to become the first player from Japan to win a major title.<\/p>\n
In the 28 months that followed, Osaka won three more Grand Slam titles. Sabalenka claimed none.<\/p>\n
But their careers soon took different paths. <\/p>\n
Osaka briefly stepped away from tennis in 2021 to prioritise her mental health before taking 15 months of maternity leave with daughter Shai, who was born in July 2023.<\/p>\n
While Osaka was away, Sabalenka finally had her breakthrough moment, triumphing at the 2023 Australian Open for her first Grand Slam title.<\/p>\n
“Obviously [we have a] different story,” Sabalenka said after her third-round win over Jelena Ostapenko.<\/p>\n
“She went through different things. I went through different things. I feel like we both were completely different players and people.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Sabalenka and Osaka faced each other for the first time almost eight years ago in New York,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":744164,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":["post-744163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744163","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=744163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744163\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/744164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=744163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=744163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=744163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}