MELBOURNE, Australia — The tennis court becomes a fun house mirror when the player across the net is Hsieh Su-Wei, the queen of the overhead drop shot, whose wicked spins, clever angles and two-handed shots from both sides can rattle her opponents.
Naomi Osaka, a three-time Grand Slam champion, sighed audibly on Sunday when informed that her reward for fending off two match points against Garbine Muguruza was a meeting with Hsieh, who clinched her place in the quarterfinals while Osaka was struggling to solve the problem that was Muguruza.
“She’s one of those players that, for me, if it was a video game, I would want to select her character just to play her,” Osaka, the 2019 champion, said.