{"id":41584,"date":"2018-09-08T11:50:18","date_gmt":"2018-09-08T11:50:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/?p=41584"},"modified":"2018-09-08T11:50:18","modified_gmt":"2018-09-08T11:50:18","slug":"naomi-osaka-faces-surreal-u-s-open-final-against-idol-serena","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/naomi-osaka-faces-surreal-u-s-open-final-against-idol-serena\/","title":{"rendered":"Naomi Osaka faces \u2018surreal\u2019 U.S. Open final against idol Serena"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>It\u2019s often said you should never meet your heroes.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>But on Saturday, 20-year-old Naomi Osaka faces a far more daunting task: Playing against her hero in the U.S. Open final.<\/p>\n<p>Osaka toppled 2017\u2019s runner-up American Madison Keys 6-2 6-4 on Thursday, earning her a spot in the Grand Slam final against Serena Williams, whom Osaka admired since she started watching the U.S. Open on television as a child.<\/p>\n<p>But Osaka, the first Japanese woman to reach a Grand Slam singles final, told reporters after her semi-final that she would focus on separating the legend from the player.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt feels a little bit, like, surreal. Even when I was a little kid, I always dreamed that I would play Serena in a final of a Grand Slam,\u201d Osaka said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAt the same time I feel like even though I should enjoy this moment, I should still think of it as another match.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYeah, I shouldn\u2019t really think of her as, like, my idol. I should just try to play her as an opponent.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Osaka has played Williams only once before, defeating her 6-3 6-2 at the Miami Open in March, undoubtedly an experience from which she can draw additional confidence.<\/p>\n<p>But even with that win under her belt, she acknowledged that Saturday\u2019s match poses entirely different challenges.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s really cool that I was able to play her so early,\u201d Osaka said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOf course, I feel like since the circumstances were so different, I\u2019ll be able to see, like, how she changed and stuff. I think that experience was really good for me.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s often said you should never meet your heroes. But on Saturday, 20-year-old Naomi Osaka faces a far more daunting task: Playing against her hero in the U.S. Open final. Osaka toppled 2017\u2019s runner-up American Madison Keys 6-2 6-4 on Thursday, earning her a spot in the Grand Slam final against Serena Williams, whom Osaka [&hellip;]<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41585,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41584"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41584\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41586,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41584\/revisions\/41586"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}