Jennifer Brady's Australian adventure began with 15 days of hard quarantine — stuck in her hotel room because she might have been exposed to COVID-19 while traveling to the country — and ended with her playing for the championship at Melbourne Park.
The 25-year-old American won't be leaving with the Australian Open title after losing to Naomi Osaka 6-4, 6-3 on Saturday. Brady does depart with a strong sense that she deserves a spot in her sport's upper echelon. “I mean, I made my first Grand Slam final.
So maybe if I wasn’t in quarantine, I would have won. Maybe,” she said with a smile. “Yeah, I don’t think it really hampered me much.