One emotional night, two brave tennis players, and a chance to rebuild lives

Athletes are architects even as they are labourers. When they meet on a court they are building things – points, careers, comebacks, triumphs. Each match is a unique construction, built at high speed, with a unique design, its foundation skill, its glue sweat, its raw material grit. These emotional edifices are quickly forgotten by viewers, are not necessarily beautiful but for the builder they are always meaningful.

- Rohit Brijnath

Over 176 minutes, starting on Sept 4 night and ending the next morning, Amanda Anisimova and Naomi Osaka created a US Open semi-final which was streaky and edgy and on the surface not much to look at. It was splattered with 24 break points and 11 breaks of serve, illuminated by 82 winners, mottled with 72 unforced errors, speckled with clenched fists and riddled with nerves.

And yet it was most profoundly a feat of bravery.

Anisimova won 6-7 (4-7), 7-6 (7-3), 6-3 and then knelt down, put her head to the court and patted it. On this ground something grand she has rebuilt. Not her alone, but Osaka, too. She was defeated and yet the scaffolding of the great player she was, is almost back in place again.

If the match was tense, erratic and alive with emotion, it was perhaps because these two players, roughed up by life, their love for the game dampened, were playing to return to the place they believed they belonged.

Only athletes know the fragility of what they do, the thin margin between advancing and slumping, the visiting demons of injury, the noose of incessant expectation.