Emma Raducanu and Naomi Osaka both lose in US Open first round
When the two best female players in the world collide at a Grand Slam final, it’s a very different story.
At Wimbledon, it was Serena Williams versus Agnieszka Radwanska, a match that was the biggest upset of the year. At the Olympic Games in London, it was Serena Williams versus Maria Sharapova.
At the US Open, it was Caroline Wozniacki against Victoria Azarenka, the second such women’s final between the pair in succession.
This past Monday, though, there was no shocker – only an all-too-familiar disappointment for the 18-time Grand Slam winner who had never won a major in her career, and the 16-time Grand Slam winner who had never won a Grand Slam singles title, let alone a major.
The Americans could have been headed into the final at this same stage of the tournament, and instead they lost to the rising 20-year-old from Belarus.
Owing to the absence of a full schedule, Raducanu and Osaka had not played together since the French Open quarterfinals, when they defeated fellow top 10 seeds, Venus Williams and Garbine Muguruza, to claim their 20th Grand Slam title.
They had hoped a return to fitness for both would allow them to go one step further, to finally get to a final together.
They were going in a completely different direction to either one of their previous finals, where they faced each other – and lost – in the fourth round at Wimbledon, where they lost again.
In truth, the pair had not played together since 2012, when they had lost to Samantha Stosur and Dominika Cibulkova in the semifinals.
Since then, Raducanu, then 23, and Osaka, then 19, had been part of the Williams-Azarenka, Williams-Stosur, Williams-Cibulkova
