Hardly anyone expected Jennifer Brady to reach Saturday’s Australian Open final, least of all Brady herself.
The 25-year-old American is one win away from her first grand slam title, an almost unthinkable prospect three weeks ago when she emerged from a 14-day hard quarantine due to Australia’s strict coronavirus protocols that left her strictly confined to a hotel room and denied the five-hour exemption for training and treatment afforded to most everyone else.
“Even before quarantine, I didn’t think I would be where I am right now, totally not,” Brady admitted after Thursday’s three-set win over Karolina Muchova of the Czech Republic that ensured passage to her first major final.
On Saturday, Brady will face three-times grand slam champion Naomi Osaka in their first meeting since a gripping, back-and-forth US Open semi-final in September that stood out as one of 2020’s highest-quality matches.
The world No 3, who cruised past Serena Williams in Thursday’s other semi and hasn’t lost a match in 53 weeks, is bidding to become the first woman since Monica Seles in the early 1990s to win the first four grand slam finals of her career.
“It will be a really tough match, obviously, as she’s won a few grand slams,” said Brady, who is guaranteed to crack the top 20 for the time in next week’s rankings. “We had a tough match at the US Open in the semi-finals and she even said it was one of her top two matches, which was unfortunate for me. I think it will be a really good match.”
It’s been a long, strange trip for the Pennsylvania native, who was one of 51 men’s and women’s singles players forced to spend two weeks in isolation after arriving in Melbourne after it was determined that someone on their chartered flight tested positive for Covid-19 upon landing.
None of the other 50 made it past round three. But Brady, seeded 22nd at Melbourne Park, has negotiated her way through the women’s draw conceding only two sets and 40 games.
“I would say I didn’t really have high expectations on myself to do well,” Brady said. “I came out of the quarantine, and then we were lucky enough to have a separate tournament for us who were in the hard lockdown. I was lucky to get a couple matches in there before starting here in the Australian Open.”
Not allowed to leave her room to practice – or for any other reason at all – Brady spent two weeks subsisting on food deliveries and FaceTime chats while hitting balls against a mattress in her room.
“The first day I got there I had grocery delivery, so I had oats delivered,” she said. “Every morning I would have oats, oatmeal and then I would actually order Uber Eats for lunch and dinner every single day.
“So I didn’t eat one of the meals that were provided. I ordered Hunky Dory the first seven days, every single day, sometimes twice a day.
“I’m a creature of habit, so I eat pretty much the same thing every single day. There were three places I would mix it up between.
“I actually didn’t watch one Netflix series just because I knew if I started something then I wouldn’t want to do anything else except just lay in bed and watch Netflix.”
It’s not exactly business as usual, but the road less traveled is nothing new for Brady, who grappled with her love for the game amid struggles as a junior while her contemporaries excelled.
“I don’t think I really just appreciated the opportunities that I had with the sport,” she said. “I was just doing it because I had to, because I had nothing else to do, because I didn’t know what else to do except for going and practicing five hours a day and just waking up and doing it all over again.
“In that aspect I didn’t really enjoy the sport. And also, I didn’t really have great success in the juniors. I wasn’t really winning many matches, so that also takes a hit at your confidence, because the other juniors my age were doing really well and having success and having early success in the pros.
“That was really hard for me, just all my confidence and my game. I took a hit there and thought maybe I’m not meant for this sport. Maybe I’m not good enough. I’ll go to college for four years and then I’ll find a real job.”
Brady enrolled at UCLA, where she helped the tennis team to a national title as a freshman in 2014. After several years in the pro ranks, including a surprise run to the fourth round on her Australian Open debut in 2017, she shot up the rankings last year after winning her maiden WTA title at Lexington and reaching the last four at Flushing Meadows.
Now she’s become the first women’s college player to advance to a grand slam final since Kathy Jordan in 1983, but the toughest hurdle yet looms in Osaka, who has only bolstered her reputation as the finest big-match player of her generation with Thursday’s beatdown of Williams, which improved her career record in the final three rounds of major tournaments to 11-0.
“I’ve definitely been practicing hard,” Brady said. “I think I’ve earned the right to be playing in a grand slam final on Saturday. I just think it’s crazy to believe.”