Last year's finalist, Ons Jabeur, made a winning start at this year's US Open, beating Camila Osorio in two sets.
The Tunisian produced a great effort last year to make her way to the final, but she couldn't go all the way. Iga Swiatek proved too much, but Jabeur hopes to finally win that elusive Grand Slam trophy this year. She played in one more final since then, but it was another losing effort.
Maria Camila Osorio is a solid player who gave her trouble, but that's hardly a surprise. Jabeur's own playstyle is very hit-and-miss most of the time, and her struggling to keep it on a high level isn't anything new. The first set demonstrated that pretty well.
She jumped out to an early 2-1 lead and then added another break to make it 4-1. Then came the collapse, so the score was 4-4 pretty quickly. Eventually, she got the opening set 7-5, but it came much harder than needed.
The second set was a similar struggle, but it came in reverse. She was down 1-3 this time around but battled back from that to take a 5-3 lead. If you think that she didn't serve out the match, you're right, as she gave Osorio to cone back by wasting two match points.
A couple of more breaks later, we were in the tiebreak, and this time around, it finally ended. Jabeur couldn't throw away it this time around, though she almost did. The final score was 7-5 7-6(4) for a very hard-fought win, one that could have been far simpler.
She didn't serve as well as she could and was pretty unstable from the baseline, but it worked out in the end. She'll need to play much cleaner in the coming rounds if she wants to go all the way.
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