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“I wanted her to have her head high, not walk off the court sad.”

— Naomi Osaka, who, after beating Coco Gauff in a blockbuster matchup at the U.S. Open, encouraged the 15-year-old to share an interview with her

The United States Open tennis tournament is a place for women to excel. That’s essentially written on the door.

The site of the tournament is named after the tennis great Billie Jean King, who, in 1973, founded the Women’s Tennis Association and lobbied the U.S. Open to give equal prize money to women and men. (It would take 34 more years for all four Grand Slam events to pay them equally.)

Today, the WTA is the world’s most successful women’s sports organization by far. On Forbes’s recent list of the highest paid female athletes, the first 11 were tennis players.

And King’s name isn’t just on the buildings. She is giving speeches dedicating a new statue of Althea Gibson, who was the first black player at the top level of the sport, and narrating a commercial about women’s leadership that aired repeatedly during the tournament.

Someday, surely, perhaps not too far down the line, something at the National Tennis Center will be named after Serena Williams.

Williams, the greatest player of her era, will play for a record-tying 24 Grand Slam singles title on Saturday, a few weeks before her 38th birthday. A victory would garner a seventh U.S. Open title, also a record.

It would also be her first tournament win since she gave birth to her daughter, Olympia, two years ago. A victory would help wash away the memories of last year’s final, when her argument with the chair umpire and the penalties he imposed launched a thousand think pieces.

More than anything, though, this year’s tournament was about young women coming into their own.

There is Williams’s opponent on Saturday, 19-year-old Bianca Andreescu, who won two of the biggest tournaments on the women’s tour this year, and has not lost a completed match since March 1 (though she missed about four months with a shoulder injury).

There is 22-year-old Belinda Bencic, a former teen prodigy whose career was interrupted two years ago by wrist surgery, but who reached the semifinals of the Grand Slam tournament for the first time, and Taylor Townsend, another former teen prodigy, who became a crowd favorite by having her best U.S. Open at 23.

There is Kristie Ahn, who first made the U.S. Open at 16 in 2008 but had not been back until this year at 27. Her parents, for years, wanted her to quit pro tennis for a more practical career — maybe something in corporate America. But she is having her most successful season.

And then there is Naomi Osaka. She was No. 1 and the defending champion, and she was disappointed in her fourth-round loss. But that is not what most people will remember about her U.S. Open. They will remember how Osaka, just 21, took Coco Gauff, the 15-year-old sensation from Florida, under her wing after their third-round match last weekend.

Gauff, who had exploded on the scene at Wimbledon in July, drew huge crowds at the Open. Osaka saw herself in Gauff. So she comforted her after the loss — encouraging her to be candid with her emotions and speak to the fans.

“I wanted her to have her head high, not walk off the court sad,” Osaka said. “I want her to, like, be aware that she’s accomplished so much and she’s still so young.”

She added: “I feel like the amount of media on her right now is kind of insane for her age. I just want her to, like, take care of herself.”

In those moments, Osaka met Gauff’s definition of a “true athlete.”

“For me, the definition of an athlete is someone who on the court treats you like your worst enemy but off the court can be your best friend,” Gauff said.

What else is happening

Here are five articles from The Times you might have missed.

“I feel like people look at bigger people and assume they’re unhealthy.” Lizzo clued us in on her health and beauty secrets — from natural hair to smelling like Rihanna. [Read the story]

“Know my name.” For years, Chanel Miller was known only as “Emily Doe,” the anonymous woman who brought a sexual assault case against Brock Turner. Now she tells her story under her own name. [Read the story]

“I said, ‘O.K., I can’t do that for you.’” Jeffrey Epstein recruited young dancers to give him erotic massages even after his 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor. [Read the story]

“It was more than just hitting a ball. It was emotion. It was passion.” These are boom times in women’s tennis, with multiple generations colliding and a resurgence of stylistic variety. [Read the story]

“It seems like a silly, girlish thing to do.” That’s what Alice Blaché was told when she wanted to make films at the start of the 20th century. She was the world’s first female filmmaker. [Read the story]

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From the archives, 1973: ‘Battle of the Sexes’

In September of 1973, the tennis great Billie Jean King defeated her male opponent, Bobby Riggs, in a landmark match that became known as the “Battle of the Sexes”— showing the world that a 29-year-old woman could beat a 55-year-old former Wimbledon champ who had claimed he could beat any woman.

“I’ll tell you why I’ll win,” Riggs had said before the match. “She’s a woman and they don’t have the emotional stability.”

King was not just in it for the personal win, though. In front of more than 30,000 fans at the Houston Astrodome — the largest crowd ever to watch a tennis match at the time — the match became a symbol for equal rights, and the equal respect that women’s sports deserve. — Sharon Attia

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